Controlled Circumstances
by Mad Minute
Summary: Ever wonder how Wesley got that field-experience he boasted of when he first appeared? [What-if plot, set in my 'Taz-verse'Work In Progress] [Ch.03 uploaded 18-06-04]
1. Prologue: You've just crossed over into ...

**CONTROLLED CIRCUMSTANCES - Prologue**

  


**DISCLAIMER:**  
The premise and all established characters of '_Buffy the Vampire Slayer_' belong to Joss Whedon and his collaborating deities (sorry: corporations, organisations and individuals), and I had no intention of claiming otherwise. Please, don't sue me: I'm not making money off this, so the only things you might win would be my Sarah McLachlan CDs and my computer - and you can have the CDs when you pry them from my cold dead fingers. :-)  
On the other hand, any character you *don't* recognise from canon is almost certainly my creation, and my permission must be obtained before anyone else uses them. Heck, the only canon characters I'm using are Wesley, Travers, and Merrick. :-)  
The opinions, views, and biases that may be expressed by the characters within this story are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the author or archivist(s). Certain real-life organisations are mentioned, but any similarity to actual persons, policies, practices or events is purely accidental. 

**SPOILER WARNING:**  
Set before the first season of canon Buffy; contains references through the first three seasons, though with an AU twist. 

**RATING:**  
Uh... overall a hard R-16, leaning towards R-18 at points (that's NC-17 to you Yanks). Foul language, graphic violence, atrocities, some sexual content and sexual violence, drug use, and generally a lot of dark and seedy adult themes and material. You have been warned: steer clear, or suck it up. 

**STORY NOTES:**  
1. This is a prequel to 'Matryoshka', written more or less in parallel, so I'm pretty sure none of this directly contradicts canon. Be aware that while it's set mostly in the Buffy-verse, I'm only using one canon character in a major way; almost everybody else is an original creation. This is a Taz-verse story, pure and simple - a look at a different kind of Slayer/support-crew/villain(s).  
2. _Italic text_ is thoughts/non-verbal communication, non-English words, or names, depending on context. \Backslashes\ indicate dialogue translated from another language, and {brackets} is a transmitted medium - electronic, written, or true telepathy.  
3. Feedback is, of course, welcome; criticism that is in any way constructive will be accepted, but out-and-out flames will be met with HALON.  
4. Napier residents will note I've fictionalised some of the town's geography, locations, and institutions. To the best of my knowledge New Zealand is not a police state, and hopefully never will be.  
5. I'm posting this instead of 'Matryoshka' mainly to get it out of my head so I can get *something* done. Hopefully, I should be able to clear out some of the cobwebs and make more progress on both fics once I get a couple of chapters of this posted and out of the way. :-D  
6. More notes will follow when/if I can arrange my thoughts into something approaching coherence. 

* * *

**PROLOGUE**

* * *

**W:** Of course, training procedures have been updated quite a bit since your day. Much greater emphasis on field work.  
**G:** Really?  
**W:** Oh, yes. Not all books and theory nowadays. I have, in fact, faced two vampires myself. Under controlled circumstances, of course.  
**G:** Well, no danger of finding those here.  
**W:** Vampires?  
**G:** Controlled circumstances.  


_Wesley Wyndam-Pryce and Rupert Giles  
_

**'Bad Girls' - Buffy ep. 3:14**  


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Courage is rarely reckless or foolish... courage usually involves a highly realistic estimate of the odds that must be faced.  


_Margaret Truman._  


* * *

_You've just crossed over into... the Twilight Zone._

* * *

**19:42, THURSDAY MARCH 15, 1993, LIMA - _07:42/15-03-93, ZULU_  
CHAUCER PLACE AND SPENCER TERRACE, NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND**  


Tatyana Alekseyevna Zyrianova slowed to a walk for a moment as she and her companion came to the corner. "\Y'know, Misha, most people would take a break on their birthday,\" she observed, tucking a stray strand of henna-dark hair back into the rubber band that secured her pony-tail. 

Peter Michael McKellar gave his best - and almost *only* - friend a *look* that was clear even behind the mirrored sunglasses that were almost part of his face. "\Since when do *you* pike out on anything, Taz?\" he countered, with a dash of genial scorn. 

Taz smiled crookedly. "\Never have, never will - but that's not the point. You're fourteen today, Misha; you're allowed to eat cake and watch videos for once, instead of sweating your way up a hill.\" 

"\Comes with the territory, Taz.\" 

Taz tipped her head, conceding the point. Both of them had long since developed a fixed determination to follow in the footsteps of their father-figure, Andrew Hazelton, who was Taz's only uncle - and a hard-bitten 'retired' veteran of the NZSAS. "\It's your funeral, my white wolf.\" 

"\Only if we let up, Taz,\" he grinned crookedly. "\C'mon, let's keep going.\" 

Even as they resumed their trot up the slopes around the bottom of the Botanical Gardens, Taz reflected on her friend's casual fluency with languages with a curious lack of envy. She'd been born and raised speaking Russian and he'd come to it only a few weeks before meeting her, yet he was as at ease speaking the language of the Tzars as she was. In fact, he spoke Russian a touch better than *she* did, in a Saint Petersburg dialect as perfect as her mother's, while *her* English was still a shade stilted and accented. _But then, the universe has to compensate for his difficulties in *some* w-_

Taz almost skidded to a halt as every cell in her body started singing like crystal. She wasn't self-absorbed enough to claim to be psychic, but she'd always had a very well-developed sixth sense - made more so by Andrushka's teachings - and she'd learned to ignore it only at her peril. And right now, it was screaming at her. 

Misha had stopped almost as she did. "\What?\" 

She cocked her head a little. "\I don't know... I've just got a bad feeling.\" 

"Awwwwwshit," the albino breathed. *Those* were words he'd heard all too often. And Taz had never learned how to back down from trouble. "Now what?" 

"\The Gardens. Let's get out of sight until we see what's going on.\" 

The Botanical Gardens were comprised of several hectares of parklands that clung to the central slope of a box-canyon formed by two off-shoots of Ahuriri Hill; the bordering slopes were covered in family homes that looked down on the trees, flower-gardens, and ornamental water-courses. One of those ponds was tucked away in a copse of trees and underbrush, and it was here that the two erstwhile joggers took cover. The sun had already dipped behind the overlooking ridgeline, and their dark-blue tracksuits meant they were well-concealed by the gloom. 

A few seconds later, they heard noise from a few metres up-hill - the slapping footfalls of a couple of people moving fast in bare feet, then the crackle of those people tearing through the underbrush. Taz waved Misha over a few metres, so he'd have a better angle to cut off anyone who tried to bolt. 

The fleeing duo crashed through some shrubs and came into the clearing around the pond, and Taz and Misha found themselves staring at one of the more outlandish sights they'd yet seen. The two fleeing figures were a pair of teenagers - a Japanese girl and a Latin-looking boy, both a little older than the joggers - but they sure as hell weren't dressed like locals. They were clad only in sleeveless, knee-length tunics belted with lengths of *rope*; both were covered in dust and dirt and sweat. The Latino was half-carrying his companion, and it was easy to see why: her entire leg was covered in blood, which welled steadily from a ragged crater on her thigh that was unmistakeably a gunshot exit-wound. 

The Latino slowed his pace a little, saying something to his companion in... Portugese? She shook her head and jerked her head down-hill in an unmistakeable 'keep going!' 

Taz and Misha glanced at each other, and neither needed words to know what the other was thinking. _What the hell is *this*?_

More thudding footfalls from uphill, big men in heavy boots by the sound of it. The two escapees(?) shot a panicked look uphill, but they'd barely made two more paces before the first of their pursuers appeared on the footpath they were headed for. He was a tall, bulky man, made more so by his attire: a black jumpsuit festooned with ammo-pouches and equipment, a matching balaclava, polarised SWAT-goggles, and Kevlar helmet. It was the sort of get-up only special forces affected, and the Browning BDA holstered at the man's hip completed all the identification he needed. 

_A Stormhawk? From the Special Purposes Group?_ Misha blinked, then shot a look at Taz and saw her jaw firm. _No surprise there - she's *never* had time for those swaggering Stormhawk thugs._

Stormhawk Security had been contracted to patrol Napier after a sudden upswing in street-violence two years ago, and Taz hadn't liked the idea from day one. Their strutting arrogance reminded her far too much of the KGB toughs she'd seen on the streets of Saint Petersburg when she was younger... and of the men who'd taken her father away when she was five. 

"Halt!" the newcomer commanded, levelling his sub-machine-gun on the two escapees. Another chill went through the watching pair as they recognised the weapon: a Chilean-made SAF nine-millimetre... the *sound-suppressed* version, the kind Stormhawk only issued to its SPG SWAT-commandos. Nor did either miss the significance of the fact that the Stormer wasn't wearing any insignia: whatever this was, the guy didn't want to be identified... which smacked uncomfortably of 'secret police', considering that Stormhawk sold themselves as nothing more than city security guards and 'defenders of the populace'. _This whole thing feels **wrong**...._

Both escapees went utterly still as the gunsel's aim steadied; then the Latino's shoulders sagged, abject defeat and despair written deep on his face. 

_What the - the way he looks, you'd think he was about to d- Oh, *shit*!_

A few seconds later, four more ninja-suited troopers came into the clearing. All were armed and dressed exactly like their companion, and their swagger said it all. "You've given us quite a run," one of them said, in a thick German accent. 

"Get *fuck*!" the Latino snarled. His companion tried to stand up alone, but couldn't quite manage it; she settled for squaring her shoulders and lifting her head in proud defiance. 

"Perhaps," the German sneered. _He's from *East* Germany, by his accent,_ Misha noted almost absently. "But we have to... *discourage* this sort of nonsense. Such a shame." 

"*What*!?" Taz breathed to herself. _He can't be serious -_

Two of the ninjas must have heard her, because they whipped around to look right at her. The closer of those two let his SAF swing on its sling, crossed to her hiding place in three quick strides, seized her by her pony-tail, and yanked her out into the open, ignoring her squawk of agony. "We've got a witness!" he said urgently, his accent Russian. 

"Too bad for her," the German declared off-hand, and his nonchalance about killing a perfectly innocent bystander chilled Taz's blood. "She got caught in a gang-fight and died in the crossfire. Let's get it done." 

Before any of the men could react to that order, Misha took the matter out of their hands. Hurtling from his hiding-place like a sprinter from the blocks, he nailed the closest ninja *right* in the small of the back with a tackle honed by years of watching NFL football on Sky TV. The tackle emptied the gunsel's lungs with a *whoof* as he hit the ground. 

Pandemonium. 

With the gunsels distracted, Taz *acted*. Grabbing her captor's sub-gun, she yanked it forward to the limit of the sling, then drove it back, the buttplate catching him right in the larynx. Cartilage crunched; even as the man - corpse - choked and went over backwards, Taz was snatching his weapon free. In one fluid motion, she unsafed the SAF, shouldered it, sighted, and loosed three rounds into the German's masked visage. His face was blasted away in a spray of gore, and he crumpled backwards into the pond, his arms splaying. 

Misha had seized his victim by the helmet and bashed his face against the pond's concrete surround thrice, quite smartly; with the man thus stunned and disabled, he snatched up the loose sub-gun and rolled away as one of the others started to aim at him. 

Taz shifted her aim, putting two bursts into the chest of the man trying to shoot Misha. He grunted and sat down hard... raised a hand to the two tight clusters of red-rimmed holes right over his heart... looked at the blood on his fingers... then sagged over sideways and quietly expired. 

The last gunsel, the other one who'd heard Taz's outburst, was caught between two targets; he was still trying to decide which one to engage when Taz fired a triple-tap into his temple and Misha put a single shot through the bridge of his nose. 

The man crumpled - **and his body and gear exploded into dust before he hit the ground**. His sub-gun had tumbled from his fingers as Taz shot him, and now landed in a flower-bed with a soft thump, the only evidence that he'd ever stood on that spot. 

"What the *fuck*!?" Misha gaped. Taz was no less stunned. 

They heard rustling cloth and grit crunching under boots. Both turned towards the noise - and were doubly gobsmacked. The man Taz had butt-stroked was **getting up**! 

_That's impossible!_ the redhead thought wildly, her jaw sagging open in amazement. _I *heard* his throat cave in - he should be dead!_

The 'corpse' growled animalistically, stripping off his helmet and balaclava and fingering his collapsed windpipe. With the mask gone, his face was revealed: all distorted and twisted, his forehead ridged, his eyes yellow, his canine teeth pronounced. 

"What the fuck are you!?" Misha breathed. 

The - *thing* - grinned and snarled again, baring its fangs. 

Taz was *not* one to stand still in a crisis; in fact, she'd based her entire life around *action*, and one of her cardinal rules was 'do *something*, even if it's wrong.' She swung her SAF around, jammed it into the thing's diaphragm, and snatched the trigger back. Three Starfire expanding bullets tore into the body, ripping flesh, splintering bone and crushing organs. 

Any one of those wounds would have killed a three-hundred-pound human. 

The thing advancing on Taz barely flinched. 

Suddenly, the Latino boy entered Taz's field of vision, his arm driving down in a dagger-stab motion. She had a bare instant to recognise that he'd stabbed her assailant right through the heart with - a piece of deadwood!? - before the thing blinked, looked down, and flashed into drifting motes of ash. 

Taz looked at her saviour with a bemused smile. "Uhhh... _gracias_." 

"_De nada_," he shrugged. 

"Shit...." Misha breathed, taking in the carnage. The pond was already crimson with the German's blood and other materials; Taz's second victim lay curled up on his side, a thin trickle of blood running through his balaclava to pool under his mouth. 

"You said it." Taz glanced at her friend's first victim... considered... then shouldered her SAF again and fired a burst that smashed the man's head all over the concrete. _Can't afford to leave witnesses who've seen our faces._ That done, she started scrubbing at the sub-gun with her track-top's sleeve to remove her fingerprints. Misha caught her motion and did likewise; when they were done, both tossed their weapons into the pond. 

"So *now* what do we do?" Misha asked, tipping his head at their rescuees. 

"Now, we get the righteous hell *outta* here before more Stormers show up. Then we get Uncle Andrushka to take us all back to his place, and we debrief these two and find out what the precise *hell* just happened." 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

Making their way out of the battle-zone had been the sort of fun that... wasn't fun. By the grace of some guardian angel (or a whole troop thereof), they'd gotten all the way back to Andrushka's ute on Carnell Street without seeing hide nor hair of Stormers or regular cops; in fact, they'd hardly seen *anybody* on the streets. Andrushka had taken one look at their tagalongs, hidden them under the tarp on the ute's cargo-deck, and forgone the questions until they could get out of Dodge. On the way, he'd cell-phoned his half-sister, telling her that his niece and Misha had asked to spend the night at his place; no, they were fine, they just wanted to try out the new computer game he'd bought; yes, he'd bring them back in time for school. 

The young pair managed to keep their self-control until they were safely out of harm's way, but little longer; when Andrushka pulled up in the driveway of his 'country house', the first thing Taz did was yank her door open, stumble out onto the grass, and cough up the fish-and-chips she'd had for tea. Misha wasn't much behind her. 

"What the bloody 'ell *'appened* out vere?" the Cockney wondered, unfastening the tarp so the two fugitives could climb down. 

Taz twisted off her knees to a sitting position, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. "Misha... that one who got up again...." 

"Yeah, I saw him, too," the albino nodded, rocking back onto his knees and heels. With the last of the adrenaline shock fading from their systems, they could consider what had just happened rationally(!). "You gave him a burst in the gut. He took three nine-mil expanders at point-fucking-blank range -" 

"- and he didn't even blink. But when our Portugese friend there stabbed him with a piece of wood he just... turned into dust." 

"Stabbed him in the heart?" 

"Yeah." 

"So what dies when you drive a wooden stake into its heart?" 

Taz looked over, locked eyes with her best friend, and nodded once; he nodded back, just as seriously. They'd seen what they'd seen, they'd *both* seen it, and impossible or not, it had *happened*. 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

A couple of hours later, they knew exactly what they were dealing with. Paolo Castillo, 16, of Rio de Janiero, Brazil, and Mariko Kuromizu, 17, of Yokohama, Japan, had been most informative; Paolo had done most of his talking to Misha in Portugese, while Mariko, who had information that was by far more valuable but could not speak owing to an old throat injury, had written almost half a pad's worth of notes and observations in broken English and immaculate Japanese... and while their information was devoid of most of the technical jargon their questioners might have used, and the precise details they might have wanted had escaped their informants' untrained minds, it was certainly enough in general terms. 

"And how many people know about this?" Misha asked. Mariko understood English perfectly, and while she was a touch loopy from the morphine Andrushka had given her, she was a sharp customer. 

{\Among them?\} she wrote. When he nodded, she continued, {\Most of the very senior people - the majors and above. Out here? As far as I know, only the five people in this room.\} 

When Misha had read that out, Taz and her uncle shared a meaningful glance. "No-one knows?" the redhead asked. "What about the police?" 

{\The authorities, the politicians, and the media know little and can prove nothing. Those who know either work for him, or are pressured into silence, or simply don't care enough; those who attempt to speak out are silenced.\} 

"So nobody's even trying to put a spanner in the works?" 

Mariko shook her head. 

"And nobody among the general public even knows about this?" 

Another head-shake. 

"Except us," Taz nodded. 

A nod from the Japanese girl. 

"Sounds like somebody has to do something about this," Misha observed... in the tone of someone who'd already made a decision and was seeking consensus from his fellows. 

"You realise that our chances of actually winnin' are about nil," Andrushka pointed out, reading the look that his niece and his near-foster-son were sharing. "They've got so much clout that we couldn't actually wreck the machinery." 

"Maybe not... but by the time we're done, they're gonna know we were here." 

"Our chances of survivin' 'til the end of the year are pretty much infinitesimal," he added... not to discourage them; to make sure they'd considered the point. 

Taz turned serious eyes on her uncle and gave him a crooked, devil-may-care grin. "Fuck it. I never planned on living forever anyway." 


	2. Ch1: Well, it's a dirty job but someone...

**DISCLAIMER:**  
If you think I own 'Buffy' or any of the canon, seek psychiatric help :-) - but barring Wesley, Travers, and maybe Merrick, everybody here is mine, all mine. 

* * *

**CONTROLLED CIRCUMSTANCES - Part One**

  


* * *

Well it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.... 

_'We Care a Lot', by Faith No More._  


* * *

**23:42, SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 28, 1995, LIMA - _11:42/28-09-95, ZULU_  
CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT, NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND**  


When you live in a country that's basically one big tectonic fault line, there are some things that come with the package. The 'occasional' tremblor; scattered volcanoes, in varying degrees of dormancy; a nation-wide theme of hills and mountains and valleys; and, as a natural consequence of geography and latitude, a great deal of rain. 

Tatyana the Vampire Slayer doffed her cap, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes, letting the steady, gentle fall of water wash over her face. "I love the rain," she sighed in her accented English, rolling her head to let the water cover her whole face. 

Misha watched his best friend, caught between marvelling at how easily she could escape her cares and being awestruck at the sheer, elemental beauty she showed in that moment. She was so at one with nature when he saw her like this.... "Which is probably just as well, Taz, living in New Zealand as you do," he murmured dryly, his throat a little thick at the sight of her. 

"I mean it, Misha," she breathed, not shifting her attention at all. "Rain doesn't care about what you've done or who you are. It just falls on everyone, washing them clean... maybe even washing away your troubles." 

Misha swallowed a rising lump in his throat. _God, she's so lovely...._ he thought dazedly, using his highest compliment... then shook his head and stuffed what he'd just felt back into its well-worn box. "Are you sure you're not part rusulka?" 

"Will you be serious for once?" she countered. 

"Hey, stranger things have happened," he shrugged. 

"This from living proof," she smiled, finally lowering her face to look at him again. She raised a hand to her lip-mike headset and pressed 'transmit'. "\Okay, Anvil, what do you have?\" 

{"\Two jokers at the front door checking ID. Smart money says they've got a back-up in the entry alcove with heavy firepower. Nobody visible at the side door, and they haven't disturbed the 'party favours' I rigged.\"} Andrew Hazelton's chosen observation point, with near-perfect views of the front door and fire-exit of the 'night-club' they were setting up on, was in the second-storey window of a department store a hundred metres away from where the Slayer and her operating partner stood. 

"\The doormen?\" 

{"\Uniformed Stormhawk troopers, both wearing sidearms. They're not letting anybody in who doesn't have the right credentials, and they're switched-on - no way you could sneak up on 'em on the street.\"} 

_And we can't use the side entrance...._ "\Did you manage to get those plans? Construction blueprints, security systems, an internal layout, anything?\" 

{"\Sorry, kiddo. Smokey said he still can't find a crack in the firewalls around Templar's mainframe. He's had less trouble getting into the CIA.\"} 

"\Shit. Thanks. Keep an eye out, the show starts in about twenty minutes.\ Looks like we'll have to take what we've got and fly with it," she shrugged to Misha, a little whimsically. 

"Oh, yeah, *that's* gonna look good in the after-action report: 'Our entire battle-plan was based on a one-liner from the Muppets'...." The young man rolled his eyes and turned his attention to the target building again. "Come in through the shop above?" 

"Arleigh-gram should do the trick." 

"Figure they've got pressure sensors or motion detectors?" 

"Be the first time. C'mon, let's move." 

Misha sighed as he started collecting his kit. _There're too damn' many unknowns about this...._ "One of these days, that hard-charging attitude of yours is gonna get us killed." 

"And your deliberate approach to things takes too long. You sound like Mama," she drawled, shrugging into her assault vest. 

"Hey, I *like* Elena," he protested, even as he checked the action on his suppressed MP-5 one last time. 

"The way your own mother ignores you, I don't blame you," she sniffed. 

"We have a 'hospitality club' to raid - can we *please* not restart *that* discussion right now?" 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

The Sundown Club's overhead lighting was the red colour and dimness of late dusk, perfect for vampire eyes. One portion of the premises was laid out like a conventional strip club, with a bar, a number of tables, and a runway for the performers to strut their stuff. Currently, a live sex show (starring a fourteen-year-old Chinese girl and two Brazilian boys only a year older) held the attention of most of the crowd in that section of the building. At the back of that section of the club, three tables held a buffet selection of cuisine to snack on: a Thai, a Filipina, and a Malayasian, only one of them even seventeen, all quite handily shackled to the tables for easy feeding. No drugs were used to subdue them; it would taint the blood's flavour. If you wanted to indulge other lusts with these girls, there were semi-private alcoves at the back, and in there, anything went - with the proviso that you paid for any damage. 

On the other side of the subterranean establishment was the real main attraction: the arena. Modelled on an old-style amphitheatre, its four superimposed rows of seating faced a twelve-foot-high razor-wire fence that separated the customer area from the hard-packed bare earth of the near-circular fighting pit. Above the fight-floor's flat side (and only door) was the 'corporate box' the _Freiherr_ and his intimates used; at the moment, it was unoccupied. Human bouncers, troopers from Stormhawk Security Forces' Tactical Reaction Corps, stood at the top of each aisle, wearing full uniform and cradling SPAS-12 auto-shotguns. The winning 'gladiator' in the last bout had made the mistake of trying to scale the fence, and the nearest Stormer had blasted her back off it for her pains; her arena-filthy, shredded body still lay at the foot of the fence as an object lesson, her blood soaking the earth into maroon mud. Now, two of her stable-mates - one Chinese, one Japanese, neither even sixteen - were engaged in mortal combat. Both wore a sleeveless, mid-thigh length smock as their only garment (pale blue for the Chinese, grey for the Japanese); both were armed only with their teeth and nails; both were covered in sweat, blood, and dust from the arena floor. The audience, mostly vampires, were all on their feet baying and cheering the fighters on, driven wild by the sight and smell of blood and violence. The two girls wrestled back and forth, biting and clawing with the savagery of desperation, for both had been told the terms of the arena when they were imported: the winner lived. The loser's fate was decided by the patrons. 

Tadeusz Zdanski, one of the vampires in the back row, had only been coming to these clubs for a few weeks, and despite the disturbing rumours about the Slayer's special interest in them, he simply couldn't help himself. In here, he could give as much rein to his lusts as his wallet would support, and not only did the legal authorities not acknowledge the Sundown's existence, they were part of the establishment! For the cover charge, you could snack on, beat, rape, even torture the imported marchandise a little; a *lot* of torture, or even a kill, cost you an extra premium - and anyone who couldn't pay never got the chance to try to default. 

_You've got to hand it to _Freiherr_ von Hausmann,_ he thought, even as he elbowed aside a burly Ventros demon to howl encouragement to the Chinese girl he'd bet five hundred dollars on, _it's a slick arrangement. He imports the girls for a pittance, squeezes every last cent out of us for our use of them, then puts them in the arena and dumps the bodies in the Pacific, and no-one cares! He makes sure that the real police never get a whiff of this place, his troops guard it, and no-one even knows these children exist, much less that they're here to be used, abused, and discarded!_

_Bar the Slayer, of course,_ he qualified, even as 'his' Chinese reeled back, leaving a piece of her shoulder between the other girl's bloody teeth but taking some of the Japanese's cheek away with her nails. He'd heard stories of Slayers before, but never of one like this. Only a handful had even been in a building she struck and lived to speak of it, and none who'd seen her face; she was especially careful about that. All the previous Slayers had fought with the traditional weapons in the traditional way, hand-to-hand, patrolling the streets, striking down those they found. This one used *modern* hardware, and she and her unknown sidekick(s) struck by surprise, where they were expected least, seeking out haunts like this, freeing all the 'food' and leaving no survivors in their wake... only devestation. Some who'd heard the radio traffic between the girl and her comrades called their group 'Forge'; other, more gloom-ridden members of Hausmann's _Ordo Astra_, their belief in their tradition of victory virtually shattered by this girl's guerilla tactics, were whispering about the Slayer's group as '_Nga Kehua_'. 'The Wraiths'. 

_Hell of a way to -_

***KA-CHOOOM!***

Everybody ducked away from the blast, ear-shattering even over the crowd and the music. A manhole-sized circle had been blown through the ceiling over the stage. Even as Zdanski turned to look, two shapes dropped through it, landed, rolled to one knee with cat-like surefootedness, raised their weapons. Barring their combat boots, ink-black body-armour festooned with ammunition and equipment, and round helmets whose hue matched the vests, they were clad entirely in midnight-blue: trousers, long-sleeved shirts, sweaters with reinforced joints. Their faces were hidden by dark-blue balaclavas, polarised Bollé SWAT-goggles, breath-filters; each carried a silenced sub-machine-gun - the attached laser sights made unnerving red lines though the smoke the entry charge had raised - and wore a pistol, ammunition pouches, hand-to-hand weapons on their vests and combat harnesses. 

_The Slayer!_ Zdanski realised, dread striking viperish fangs deep into his heart. 

Even as he finished turning, the pair stood and opened fire, their suppressed weapons making only an eerie 'tik-tik-tik' sound as the actions cycled. Their shooting was controlled, mechanically rhythmic, inhumanly precise: sight-acquire-fire, sight-acquire-fire. Each burst struck its victim right in the head, shattering it. Vampire after vampire flashed into dust as hollowpoints wrecked - smashed - their brains and spinal columns. 

At the foot of the main stairs leading up to the street, the Stormhawk guard raised his SPAS-12, sighting on the taller intruder. Even as he started to press the trigger, the smaller figure pivoted, set its laser-sight on the man's face, fired. The Stormer went down, his head virtually exploding. An instant later, one of the aisle-guards met a similar fate and went tumbling down the tiers like a rag-doll. 

Though their view of events was obscured by those above them, even the arena-goers on the lowest tiers could see *that* and know it was no good. They scattered hither and yon, some seeking escape, others to attack the interlopers - but all the avenues for either led up into the attackers' lines of fire. 

The taller intruder lowered her(?) sub-gun for a moment, snatching a small cylinder from a vest pocket to pull the pin and lob it into the amphitheatre. An instant later, it exploded into a shower of white phosphorus pellets that burned everything they touched, incinerating a dozen vampires in their tracks. The Ventros that had just elbowed past Zdanski to launch itself at the duo howled in agony as a dozen pellets bored into its flesh, and reeled into him, knocking him tumbling backwards down the seating. The vampire landed on his belly in the bare space between the front benches and the arena fence, momentarily dazed. 

_I've got to get out of here!_ was his first thought, but even as he started to gather himself, he caught a glimpse of the club's fire-door swinging open, maybe a dozen patrons pushing to get up the stairs. There was another, complex explosion; the whole stairwell was suddenly deluged with jellied patroleum, and a split-second later the would-be escapees were hacked down by three scything arcs of high-velocity metal, steel ball-bearings and burning magnesium pellets, most of them vanishing in puffs of fiery dust, the rest scattering, shrieking and blazing, from the sudden inferno in the stairwell. 

_No escape!_ he realised, a bare instant from full-blown panic... before an idea occurred to him. _But if I wait here... play dead... watch... tell the _Freiherr_ of what I see, I'll survive. He'll *reward* me for word of this!_

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

Even as Taz's Willy-Pete exploded among the pit-fight audience and Andrushka's 'party favours' - homebrew napalm ignited by Claymore mines the old operator had rejigged for vampire slaying - closed off the fire-exit, Misha could feel the momentum of the battle - and it was all going their way. The vampires in here were all eaters, not fighters, and they didn't, couldn't know how to deal with such an assault. Denied time to think in a situation like this, how you reacted instinctively was the difference between survival and death, and the bad guys didn't have the training to react the right way to survive. 

"\Set!\" Taz cried, raising her MP-5 again. 

_Motion in peripheral vision_. Misha shifted his aim. A Stormer kneeling on the top arena tier - a muzzle-flash! A half a dozen simultaneous body-blows, each a punch from Thor, knocked him right on his rump. His reflexive return shot was off, stitching the woman from left breast to right collarbone. She grunted, looking astounded as the triple impact lifted her; Taz caught the movement and finished her with three more rounds to the temple. 

"\You okay?\" 

_Owwwwwwch...._ "\Just lost my wind!\" he assured her, standing again. His body-armour had absorbed the pellets' energy, but the bruises the next morning would be the size of his fist. He'd been shot enough times to know that. _Damn' eyes...._

{"\Response unit headed this way!\"} Andrushka interjected. 

"\Regular cops or Stormhawks?\" Misha asked, blowing the throat out of a staggering Ventros demon. 

{"\Tacticals.\"} 

"\Kill 'em!\" Taz said promptly. 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

Andrushka hadn't needed the instruction. He'd chosen his weapon that night with great care and attention to local conditions and the situation. Tacticals travelled in armoured Nissan Pathfinder four-wheel-drives, each man on a four-man response unit packing a pistol and either a Chilean-made SAF sub-gun or (for the senior man) a full-blown Colt M-4 carbine. Thus, he needed more firepower than his customary G-3(SG-1). 

The Heckler and Koch G-8, the G-3's half-brother, was designed especially for counter-terrorist use, which made for several interesting features. It was accurate enough to be used for sniping, rugged enough to be used on the battlefield - and if need arose, it was easily converted to a belt-feed mechanism to provide fire support. Andrushka had opted for that latter alteration and loaded a full two-hundred-round belt of four-to-one FMJ/tracer, slapped on a night-vision telescopic sight and bipod, and waited for customers. And here they were: a Pathfinder full of Stormhawk Tacticals, frantically racing up to 'protect' patrons of a club that officially didn't exist. Giving the beige-and-ochre four-wheeler with the flashing red-and-yellow lightbar just enough lead, he snuggled the machine-rifle in tight, gathered himself, and squeezed the trigger. 

His first second-long burst went straight through the right side of the windscreen, aiming fifteen rounds at the man behind the steering wheel. Armoured glass was tough, but not that tough; the windscreen imploded, and the Pathfinder suddenly wobbled, went sideways on the wet asphalt, and flipped up onto the passenger's side. It went screeching along the street for almost fifty metres before wrapping itself around a streetlight. Andrushka gave each of the door-guards a five-round burst, the high-velocity 7.62mm-NATO rounds sneering at Kevlar and barely noticing flesh and bone; then, never having been one to leave a live enemy behind, he poured the rest of the belt into the roof of the wrecked four-wheeler. Leaking petrol vapours met the phosphorus from the tracer, and the Stormer vehicle went up in a fireball that almost dazzled the former SAS trooper. Human or vampire, no-one was getting out now. Not taking the time to savour the moment, he slapped a new belt into the G-8's smoking receiver; he'd need it. 

{"\Got 'em, but there'll be more coming. You jokers better work fast!\"} he urged, opening up on the patrons trying to get out the club's nominal entrance. Vampire or demon or human, it didn't matter to him: none cleared the doorway. 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

{"\We had it in mind!\"} Taz replied tartly. Her sub-gun ran dry, and she swung it up and around on its sling to hang across her back. She'd always been a get-up-close-and-personal kind of operator, and now she reverted to her preferred close-combat weapons, her right hand snatching a stake from her hip-pouch, her left taking the Ka-Bar from her right shoulder-strap. Stopping an onrushing vampire by simply driving the Ka-Bar through its throat to the spine, she brought the stake up and drove it up under her victim's ribcage into his heart. 

The vampire's eyes bulged, staring into hers from only a few inches away, wide in shock and agony. The Slayer smiled viciously behind her mask, twisted the stake, then withdrew it and moved on, leaving the vampire to crumple to the floor with mystic flames consuming him from within. 

Misha's eye-problems denied him the depth-perception for Taz's get-to-grips, rough-and-tumble style of fighting, but he made up for it with fanatical development of his shooting skills, especially at CQB ranges. Even as Taz drove the few remaining patrons before her, herding them towards the stairs (and Andrushka's kill-zone) by killing those who tarried, he mopped up those who remained in other parts of the club with aimed bursts of sub-gun fire. Thankfully, all the kids had hit the deck when the Arleigh-gram went off and stayed down since, so there were no obstructions in his lines of fire other than structural. (A moment's gratitude for kids who grew up in rough territory.) 

A few seconds later, it was all over. Not a single patron in the 'hospitality club' was moving; most were dust, either on the floor or in the front doorway. All the guards had offered resistance and paid the price. 

"\Hammer One, clear!\" Taz cried. "\I'll get those 'gladiators' out.\" 

"\Hammer Two, clear!\" Misha confirmed, lowering his sub-gun. "\I'll round up the rest.\" 

{"\Anvil, clear,\"} Andrushka added from his post. {"\I'll have the cargo out front in a minute. Next Stormer unit gets here in three, so don't stop for lunch!\"} 

"Nag, nag, nag," Misha muttered without keying his radio, crossing to the runway. All three 'performers' were huddled behind it, staring up at him with wide, terrified eyes. "We're friends - we're here to help you," he assured them in English, the _Ordo Astra_'s common language. "Go to the foot of the stairs and wait. *Don't* go outside." He repeated the bare essentials in Portugese and Cantonese, and all three obeyed almost instantly. 

Not watching them go, Misha went around to free the girls at the tables. Lacking time to finesse their bonds, he severed the handcuffs with his pocket-sized bolt-cutters, gave them the same instructions, and went over to assist Taz. 

Taz, for her part, resheathed her weapons and cleared a path for the two bloodied gladiators with her own wire-cutters. Lacking Misha's facility with languages, she settled for pointing to the stairs, then reloaded her MP-5 and surveyed the portcullis at the back of the arena. "\Two, get these two out as well, I'm going to check the holding cells!\" 

"\On it!\" 

Conscious of the seconds ticking away, Taz snatched open a vest pocket and unravelled a six-metre length of flexible shaped-charge cord. Pressing it to the portcullis to outline a rough oblong six feet high and four wide, she set the detonator and stepped aside to punch the 'fire' key. Despite the seemingly muted nature of the blast, the result was distinctly satisfactory: amputated all around its edges, the outlined section of iron bars groaned, wavered, then crashed flat onto the arena floor. _Instant door. Explosives - you gotta love 'em._

"One, truck's here!" Misha called from the stairway. "Two minutes until the Stormies arrive!" Andrushka appeared at the club's doorway with his G-8 in hand. "\Go with him!\" he told the oldest girl, the Malayasian; she nodded and started hustling her fellows up the stairs. With Andrushka handling the extraction, Misha turned and hurried to assist his partner. 

Either side of the passageway behind the arena door held six holding-cells, each only a metre square. Only six of those twelve cells were occupied, and of those kids, four of them were bloodied, filthy, and exhausted, though they wore fresh bandages over their wounds. A man in Stormhawk beige and wearing a red-cross armband was standing in front of the nearest cell, a Browning BDA raised and aimed in both hands. Taz flung herself sideways and rolled across the floor, going under his first shot and closing the distance between them; her left foot arrived ahead of the rest of her, folding the man's knee backwards the wrong way. Even as the Stormer landed next to her, howling and clutching at the broken joint, the edge of her right hand smashed down on the bridge of his nose like an axe-blade, driving bone splinters into his brain. Dismissing the spasming corpse that fast, she rose and made for the cell doors. 

Even as she knelt before the first door, a Stormer came swinging around the corner at the far end of the cell-bay, his SAF levelled waist-high - 

- _Ah, shit!_ Taz thought, chagrined at being caught napping like this. She went for her holstered Glock, knowing she'd never get there - 

- and the Stormer went over backwards in a puff of pink mist, his amazed expression marred by the trio of bullet-holes in his forehead. 

Taz glanced the other way, knowing what she'd see. Indeed, there was Misha just inside the portcullis, lowering his smoking MP-5 a little. "\Nicely timed,\" she nodded. 

"\All part of the service. We have a clock to beat, remember?\" he reminded her, keeping careful watch in both directions. 

"\Right.\" Again working with the deliberate haste of long practice, she set finger-charges against the locks of each cage door and started the fuses, working so fast that by the time the first charge went off, she was setting the third. As each gladiator emerged from their call, Misha gave them directions. 

As the last 'fighter' disappeared out the portcullis, Taz got back to her feet, dumped the spent mag from her MP-5, and slapped in a fresh one. "\Right. Now, let's -\" 

Shots and a child's scream cut her off, and both youths bolted for the portcullis. 

Zdanski's dreams of glory had had time to ferment, and visions of the rewards for actually *killing* Forge had overwhelmed him during the delay. He'd crept over to the nearest Stormer corpse during the delay and retrieved her Browning, ready to ambush 'Forge' when they reappeared through the gate. Instead, he'd tagged a damn kid! 

That was his last thought, because even as he gaped at the fourteen-year-old blonde who was sagging back against the grille, two dark-clad forms appeared in the gap in the portcullis, sub-guns ready. He was dead before his eyes could process the muzzle-flashes. 

"\Fuck!\" Misha hissed, lowering his weapon again as the tumbling corpse crumpled into dust. "\Get her to the cargo - I'll empty the register!\" 

"\On it!\" Taz nodded, wielding her slung MP-5 in one hand, pistol-fashion, as her other arm supported the girl. "\C'mon, kid,\" she murmured, not unkindly, "\let's get you out of here.\" 

Misha vaulted the bar and punched the register's 'open' key, quickly snatching out wads of notes and stuffing them into his hip-bag, then raking the gold and silver coins in after them. Some might call it macabre, but none of them had any qualms about robbing the _Ordo Astra_ or its various organs; every cent they took hit von Hausmann in both of the places it hurt him most - the pocketbook and the ego - and almost ninety-eight percent of it went back into funding their own operations to counter him. 

With that done, he went scrambling for the stairway. He cleared the club's front door in time to see another Stormhawk Pathfinder come screeching around the corner down the street, lights blazing and siren blaring. 

Behind him, the flap in the canvas covering the cargo-deck of the three-tonner they'd 'acquired' for this caper peeked open, and the _tik-tik-tik-tik_ of a suppressed weapon on full-auto came to his ears. The Pathfinder's armoured windscreen starred under the impacts, and the four-wheeler slewed to a halt, all four troopers diving out. 

Using the opening Taz had given him, Misha seized the grab-bar and half-vaulted himself up into the back of the truck. Thanking his partner with a nod, he knelt up again, turned, and joined her in pouring sub-gun fire into the Stormers who were trying to take cover behind the Pathfinder. One man was late getting there and went sprawling in the street, clutching at a shattered shoulder and howling in agony; another stood up behind the engine-bay and tumbled backwards as Misha's fire tore half his face away. 

"\Anvil, all bodies in, let's get the fuck outta Dodge!\" he cried, covering Taz as she reloaded again. 

"\Gone!\" And with a lurch, the big diesel vehicle started moving, rumbling up the street away from Hausmann's newly-arrived gunsels... and more importantly, from the blue-and-red lights of legitimate police units also responding to the disturbance. 

Both teenaged troopers held their positions, keeping the Stormer's heads down with their sub-gun fire, until Andrushka rounded a curve that broke both sides' line of fire. It took a moment for the duo to relax enough to lower their weapons. When they both realised that the firefight was in fact over, at least for now, they shared a long look of relief and turned towards their passengers. 

The Stormers out of sight and mind for the moment, Misha shed his helmet and scrambled over to where the blonde girl lay screaming softly in a growing pool of blood. One of her fellow gladiators was already kneeling over her trying to tend her wounds, and one of the Brazilian boys was doing his best to help. 

"\Let me through,\" he urged in Portugese, half-pushing the boy aside. 

One glance was all it took. The girl had been hit laterally through the belly three times; two of the bullets had ruptured her liver, and it looked like the third had at least nicked her spine. Her tunic was soaked in near-black blood, and short of a full transplant in the next twenty minutes, she was beyond help. 

Taz joined him and saw the girl's wounds, assessing their severity with that same ease... an ease born of far too much practice. She and Misha shared a look; both understood the situation, and the choices that they faced. 

"\What's your name, child?\" Misha asked, gently brushing the girl's blonde fringe back from her face, a face already pale and sweaty from shock. He spoke in Russian; her screams and pleas had been in Serbo-Croat, which was close enough to Russian for government work. 

"Natalija," she gasped. Tears were running down her cheeks, and she'd bitten through her lip trying to control her screams. "Natalija Treskovic." 

"Natalija," he nodded. "\You're hurt pretty badly. We can get you to a hospital where you can get help -\" 

"\Can *they* find me there?\" she interrupted. 

Misha swallowed. "\Probably. Almost certainly.\" 

She *smiled*. It was a weak, sarcastic expression, but still a smile, and horrible to see on a face so close to the grave. "\Go to hospital to live - and be returned to the slave-pens?\" She shook her head. "\I'd rather die free.\" 

"\That's your choice. We can give you some pain-killers to make it easier -\" 

"\Please!\" she nodded. 

Taz nodded and retrieved the medical kit Andrushka had left in the back for them, filling a syringe from a large phial of morphine despite the high-speed swaying of the truck. 

"\Are you religious, Natalija? How should we pray for you when we bury you?\" Misha asked urgently, blinking back tears of his own as he laced his fingers with hers. 

"\I'm... I'm Croatian. Catholic. They took me just after my First Communion.\" 

Misha nodded, wishing he could take off the balaclava so she could see his encouraging smile... but they didn't dare let anyone see their faces, 'rescued' or not. "\Okay. We're going to give you something for the pain now.\" 

He caught Taz's eye and nodded, and as she pushed the needle into Natalija's heart, Misha started to recite the Twenty-Third Psalm in Russian. Natalija caught the familiar rhythm and sense of the words and started speaking with him, her voice getting ever weaker. She'd just gotten to 'for Thou art with me' when the morphine hit her system and her eyes went dreamy; a second later, her voice faltered, then trailed off, and those pale brown eyes went completely blank. 

Misha swallowed the lump in his throat and closed the girl's eyes gently, then carefully laid her hand back down, moved up to the front of the cargo-bay, and sat back against the cab, thankful that his goggles hid his tears. Taz moved up and sat beside him, resting a hand on his shoulder in mute comfort as the truck rolled on. 

And outside, the rain kept falling. 


	3. Ch02: Pleased to meet you

**DISCLAIMER:**  
If you think I own 'Buffy' or any of the canon, seek psychiatric help :-) - but barring Wesley, Travers, and maybe Merrick, everybody here is mine, all mine. 

Incidentally, mine is the Donald Sutherland 'Merrick', at least physically. The other guy just didn't cut it for me. :-D 

* * *

**CHAPTER TWO**

* * *

_Pleased to meet you - hope you've guessed my name...._

* * *

**02:31, MONDAY SEPTEMBER 29, 1995, LIMA - _14:31/29-09-95, ZULU_  
SUNDOWN CLUB, NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND**  


Clean-up operations were already well under way when a dark green sedan rolled up to the saw-horse barricades cordoning off the street. A Stormhawk trooper wearing the red-trimmed three-and-a-half lateral stripes of a Tactical sergeant stepped outside of the perimeter, his hand on the pistol-grip of his slung sub-gun as he crossed to the vehicle's right-front window. "You can't come -" 

The window came down, revealing a face that every Tactical knew; the Stormhawk Security IdentiCard that accompanied that face was little more than procedure. 

The Tactical's comment died aborning, and he stepped back quickly, snapping to attention. "Forgive me, _Herr Direktor_; please proceed." 

"_Danke, Feldwebel,_" the vampire smiled pleasantly, and waited for the troopers to clear a path before he drove on. Pulling up a few metres from the burnt-out Pathfinder, he dismounted and surveyed the scene with an eye for detail that could only be the product of more than fifty years of training and combat experience. _A machine-rifle in a window overlooking the front entrance and side exit,_ he judged, taking in the four-wheeler's wreckage and the bullet-holes riddling the building's façade and mentally computing the firing angles. Stepping over and around the bodies being collected by Stormer G&R teams, he made his way down the stairs and contemplated the carnage in there as well, noting the slashed wire around the arena, the expertly blown cell-bay door, the scorch-marks from the phosphorus grenade, and the scattering of head-shot corpses. 

_Precise, swift, and an exercise in brutal efficiency - another _Nga Kehua_ strike,_ he judged, smiling to himself a little. _God, these people are good._

Officially, Stormhawk Security Forces' Senior Vice-President (Operations) was a native-born New Zealander named Eric Richards who was approaching forty years of age - and he had splendidly complete documentation to prove it. In point of fact, he had been born Erik Franz Rechner, in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, in 1920. Tall, lean and dark-haired, Rechner was outwardly in his mid-twenties in his unChanged visage, and would have been sternly handsome save for the mass of powder-burns and scars that covered most of his right cheek - a souvenir of a StG-44 that had blown up in his face during the 1944 Ardennes offensive. His manner spoke to profound competence, as it should have done: after all, he'd been a professional soldier for almost his entire adult life, and all of his unlife. 

He had volunteered for the _Luftwaffe_'s paratroop unit, the _fallschirmjäger_, in July of 1940, and he'd seen some of the nastiest fighting of the Second World War before the Freiherr had Turned him just before VE-Day. His part in the invasion of Crete had taught him the fighting qualities of the New Zealand soldier... a lesson most of his comrades in the _fallschirmjäger_ had never had the chance to appreciate. Upon being granted his transfer to a Waffen-SS _panzergrenadier_ regiment, he'd fought his way across Russia and halfway back before being shifted to a 'rest sector' in France... just in time for the Allied invasion. Arnhem had been as close to hell as he ever wanted to get: the Tommies had been worthy of the 'paratrooper' title, fighting tooth-and-nail (sometimes literally) for every house, every street-corner, every pile of rubble with consummate skill and the savage, fanatic courage of desperation. Every single instant was horribly clear to his memory: the smells and sounds and sights and terror of hand-to-hand fighting in more trenches and fighting-holes and bombed-out houses than he cared to count; the tearing agony of a Maori bayonet through the hip; his best friend, Maxi Dresbach, dying in a pool of his own gore, still confusedly clutching at the stumps of legs that Ivan mortars had blown away at mid-thigh; the ear-splitting, bone-rattling *CRANG* of an Ivan anti-tank shell punching through the armour of his half-track; Arndt and Mertens and Pannwitz screaming as they burned alive inside that tracked coffin; Sorsch's bubbling gurgle as the clattering treads of a T-34 crushed him to red jelly. 

All of that notwithstanding, the idea of giving this news to his sire made him distinctly uneasy. Ever since this Slayer had been Called, 'Gerard Houseman' had had little but disappointments and frustrations, and that sort of diet soon got sickening. For that matter, he was getting fed up himself... but by the same token, he'd always enjoyed a challenge. 

Clearing his throat, he caught the eye of the Tactical lieutenant who was in command of the scene; the human joined him post-haste. "How many casualties?" His English was only slightly accented, but the Templar rep looked distinctly out of place, dressed as he was in a grey Armani suit among all the beige-uniformed Stormhawks and so spotless amidst all this destruction. 

"Outside?" The human took a moment to check his notes. "Seven of our troops dead and two wounded, one of those seriously. From the staff and internal detail, at least ten dead and the same missing; I don't think we'll ever know for sure how many patrons bought it. They used fire extensively: phosphorus grenades, improvised napalm, magnesium-laden mines, tracer bullets...." 

"I presume a number of the 'workers' are unaccounted for. How many?" 

"Nine. There's a blood-trail leading outside, but we're not sure if it was a worker or one of the shooters." 

"Their total time on-site?" 

"From the first explosion to our reinforcements losing sight of them, four minutes, five at most." 

"How many of them were there?" He knew, based on what he'd seen, but he wanted to know what his troops had said - if only to see what sort of spin they'd put on this affair. 

"Debriefs indicate at least a full squad, with heavy weapons." 

"Bullshit," the vampire snorted to himself. He'd always been fond of English curses, they were so versatile.... "There was a sniper/look-out across the road, and this was done by two people, three at the most." 

_You have to admire their persistence,_ he thought, shaking his head as he considered the gutted club. _Even the Russian partisans and the French _Maquis_ were never like *this*. Two and a half years, and still they keep hitting us several times a week, sometimes elsewhere in the country but usually here in Napier. They're well-trained, disciplined, and highly motivated._ A twinge went through the former _panzergrenadier_ at that thought; he couldn't really blame them for their fanatical hatred for his master and his works, when he himself couldn't stomach things such as this club. _And they're certainly well-equipped and funded,_ he added with a twisted smile. _Most of their money and gear comes out of *our* coffers and armouries, and we're in no danger of depleting either in the near future. They have to know they can't possibly bring down the _Ordo Astra_ militarily, or even Templar and its subsidiaries, yet still they keep hitting us. If I'd had them in my squad in Russia, I'd be sipping wine in the Kremlin by now._

"Sir?" 

"What is it, _Leutnant_?" Rechner asked, looking back at the human. 

"I was wondering what we should do once we've finished the clean-up, sir. What sort of gambit are we looking at?" 

Rechner shrugged, quickly sorting through a dozen different scenarios in his head before going with the simplest. "Once you've done all you can with the evidence and the bodies, burn it. We'll tell the newspapers -" 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

**08:31, SEPTEMBER 29, 1995, LIMA - _20:31/29-09-95, ZULU_  
SAINT GEORGE'S ACADEMY, NAPIER**  


{FIRE, ACCIDENT CLAIM FIFTEEN LIVES 

Fifteen people, including seven members of Stormhawk emergency services, lost their lives in an incident at a commercial address early this morning. The building, a nightclub that was undergoing major renovations following a change of ownership, caught fire following an apparent electrical problem and suffered significant damage. At least eight of the renovation staff died in the blaze, along with three members of Stormhawk Security Services who entered the building to aid in its evacuation; spokesmen refused to comment on the possibility of a higher death-toll, saying only that recovery operations were still in progress. 

The tragedy was compounded a few moments after the initial reports of a fire when another Stormhawk patrol vehicle responding to the emergency lost control and crashed outside, bursting into flames and killing all four officers aboard. } 

_Yeah, and I'm Diana, Princess of Wales!_ Ngaire 'Kelly' Hikurangi snorted laughter as she kept reading the '_Daily Telegraph_'. The _Telegraph_ belonged to Templar Media Properties, so its spin on the incident wasn't all that surprising - it wasn't like von Hausmann was going to admit the truth, much less let the authorities know it or the press disseminate it - but lies such as these were patently transparent. Especially when she, firstly, knew what that place had really been; secondly, knew who had hit it; and thirdly, recognised the sound of automatic-weapons fire when it jarred her out of a sound sleep at one in the morning. 

_Speak of the devil...._ She suppressed a smile as her two friends came in, as always appraising their appearance. 

The fifth-form girl who came through the door first wore the black lace-up shoes required by school dress rules, but eschewed the white stockings most other girls wore in favour of often-darned (but far more *practical*) work-socks. Her knee-length scarlet skirt was faded and worn, her white blouse had faded spots of engine-grease on the collar, the knot in her scarlet tie was askew, and the scarlet jersey with the Saint George's cross on the left breast had a *safety-pin* holding together its right cuff. 

For all that she was still a month shy of her seventeenth birthday, Taz had reached her full physical maturity some months ago, and her five-foot-nine, hundred-thirty-five pound body was sleek and powerful, her movements having an almost predatory grace more sensed than seen, a feeling of controlled power. The legs under the skirt were long and well-muscled; though the rest of her body was hidden from proper view, her jersey hinted at a fairly nice bust and her stance and bearing had the poise of a martial artist... and an assurance which could all too easily taken for arrogance. Her lips were full, her cheekbones high and the cast of her face gamine; she wore her hair in a fiery dark-auburn French braid that reached her elbows, the glint in her grey-green eyes spoke to mischevious humour - and the stubborn lines of her jaw to the fact that the concept of 'back down' was absolutely alien to her. 

Her companion, also a fifth-former, was slightly overshadowed by her presence, but Misha was well worth noticing... if you looked beyond the blindingly obvious. Certainly his clothes were nothing impressive: exceedingly battered 'Blundstone' shoes, winter-uniform grey trousers (second-hand and thread-bare), winter long-sleeved white shirt (with a frayed collar), a scarlet St. George's jersey (riddled with runs, and one elbow patched together by hand) - even his tie was faded and tattered at the hems. 

Unlike his best friend, Misha still had some filling-out to do, but even at his current five-foot-six, he too was decidedly drool-worthy: he had the balanced build of a long-distance triathlete, a look of almost limitless resilience and stamina, and the same smooth economy of motion Taz had... but few people looked past the superficial: the absolutely colourless white of his skin, the sickly off-white of his close-cropped hair, the mirrored aviator-frame sunglasses that hid most of his face. His was a manner of diffident, distracted intelligence, virtually radiating a 'don't mind me, I'm just an absent-minded professor' feel. 

_She's a cougar, and he's a wolf,_ Kelly thought, not entirely fancifully. It never ceased to amaze her that none - *none* - of her classmates recognised that two of their number were such... such *predators*. _Admittedly they don't go out of their way to **advertise** what they are, but anyone with a gram of instinct should be able to see it! Maybe it's a Nexus kind of thing - all the background magical energy in this town kind of clouds peoples' perceptions or something. The way people just mutely take Hausmann's fascist bullshit and ignore the goblins in their midst, it wouldn't really surprise me,_ she shrugged inwardly, flipping back a loose strand of collar-length, glossy-black hair. 

Kelly wasn't all that hard on the eyes herself, though she would never be a supermodel. Though the school's Head Girl was an inch shorter than Taz, she was a touch more solidly built and almost as graceful; like most Maori, she was black-haired, brown-eyed and sepia-skinned, but her bone-structure was finer than the norm and she had an air of elegance and dignity that was only reinforced by gold-rimmed oval glasses. 

Shaking off her split-second musings, the well-dressed seventh-former glanced towards the desk at the front of the classroom... and went still as she saw Mister Glasson's darkening expression. _Aw, hell, don't tell me the new Deputy Headmaster's one of those disciplinarian types!_ she moaned inwardly. 

"You there!" the man barked, straightening out of his seat to his full five-feet-four and glaring at the new arrivals. "Your names!" 

It was his tone that brought every eye in the room to bear on him. Harsh, authoritarian, arrogant, it was the tone of a tin god bully... such as the youth of Napier were all too familiar with, these days. 

Kelly stifled another moan as Taz's eyes came to bear on the teacher, and the contempt in her gaze was none too thickly veiled. "Zyrianova, Tatyana Alekseyevna, *sir*," she said sweetly, with a mocking little bow, and Kelly's eyes widened a little. Taz had no time for fools and no problems about telling them so, but if she pushed *this* one -! 

"McKellar, Peter Michael, *sir*," Misha supplied without any inflection whatsoever... a tonelessness that told Kelly, for one, exactly what he thought of this new teacher's attitude. 

"You're both on lunch-time detention. I will not tolerate lateness," Glasson declared, sounding very satisfied with himself. 

"Respectfully, sir, we were unavoidably delayed -" Misha began. 

"I don't care about your excuses!" 

Misha took a calming breath, then finished, "- by a snap identity check a couple of blocks from school," as if he hadn't been interrupted. 

Taz rolled her eyes and added acidly, "Or would you rather we'd declined to co-operate with the nice men holding automatic weapons?" 

"Congratulations: you just got an after-school for insolence, too!" Glasson snapped, standing again. 

Taz's lips thinned, and she shifted her weight a little; Misha caught it and raised his hand a fraction. Thus reminded of her temper, she subsided a little... though not much. 

"As for you, boy, you're out of uniform. Go straight home, *right now*, and change into the proper seasonal uniform - and take off those sunglasses; this is a school, not Hollywood." 

"I must respectfully decline, sir." 

"The school dress rules -" 

"I have a standing exemption; ask anyone here. I suffer from a genetic disorder known as Type-1-B oculo-cutaneous albinism." Glasson looked blank, and Misha sighed. "I'm an albino... *sir*." 

Glasson flushed angrily; the boy's tone made it clear he was being considered a fool, and for him to offer such a preposterous excuse -! "A likely story, Mister McKellar." He came around his desk, leaned over, and snatched the shades from Misha's face, exposing his eyes to the brilliant sunlight streaming in through the classroom windows. The youth gasped and shielded his eyes with a wince. Glasson was too busy posing pompously to notice the subvocal growl that escaped several of the onlookers... including Taz and Kelly. "Albinos have red or pink eyes, Mister McKellar; yours are neither, and that makes you a damned liar." 

"You're misinformed - *sir*. The 'redness' -" 

"Oh, so now I'm ignorant?" Glasson posed rhetorically. 

"Actually, it struck me as more of a lifelong kind'a thing," Misha returned cuttingly, his temper slipping its leash for a moment. 

Glasson went almost puce, and he was about to speak again when Kelly took a hand... before things turned into a *complete* disaster. "Excuse me, sir, but neither your tone nor your language are called for. The school rules specifically state that no one, student or faculty member, shall use abusive language." 

"And who the hell are you to be quoting the school rules to me?" Glasson sneered. 

"I'm the Head Girl, sir. I'm -" 

"*You're* the Head Girl?" He looked her over incredulously. "I might have known. Sit down, Hikurangi; I am the Deputy Headmaster of this school, and I will not be lectured by a student, much less a two-way tart like you." 

Kelly went a little pale, and it didn't take a psychic to feel the sudden wave of resentment and hatred than ran through the students present. 

"That was *definitely* uncalled for, *sir*," Taz bit out, her accent thickening by the moment. 

"Really? We'll see if Mister Harcourt sees it that way. Hikurangi, you too." 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

A chunky, stolid man with thinning brown hair and careworn features, Gordon Harcourt listened to Glasson's account without his expression changing in the slightest, not letting a hint of his contempt for this strutting, self-important little toad show. The post of Deputy Headmaster had been vacant for almost four months before Glasson applied, and Harcourt had been too eager to cut his workload from 'crippling' to merely 'exhausting' to wonder why someone with Glasson's qualifications had been in and out of the educational establishment ever since receiving them. Now he knew, and it was too late to rectify that mistake... but on the other hand, he *could* limit the damage. 

When Glasson finished speaking, Harcourt turned to the three youths standing before his desk and considered them for a moment. "Well?" he asked mildly. 

Kelly motioned for the younger two to state their case first, and Misha, being the one who was better able to tread lightly, took the floor. "We *were* late, sir; Stormhawk officers stopped us on our way here and detained us for several minutes while they verified our identification, and they seemed disinclined to let us go without completing their checks. None of us used abusive language or swore at 'Mister' Glasson; in fact, while I don't want to sound like a schoolyard lawyer, you have a room full of witnesses who'll tell you that 'Mister' Glasson was unwilling to hear any explanation, called me a liar, and cast aspersions upon Kelly's personal conduct that would have been grounds to demand satisfaction by duel in another age. And while I admit both Taz and I may have been a little smart," he smiled crookedly, "it was purely self-defence." 

Harcourt didn't let himself laugh. The ability to joke in the face of this sort of trouble was increasingly rare, but it could easily be mistimed. "Would the three of you wait outside, please? And close the door on your way out." 

Glasson smirked at the trio as they filed out the door... a smirk that slipped, fast, when he saw that none of them looked particularly worried. Looking back to his senior as the door came closed completely, he was about to add another nail to their coffin... but stopped short when he saw the look of pinched fury on Harcourt's face. 

"At this school less than two hours, and already you're an expert on all the students, including the Head Girl?" the Headmaster asked acidly. "Did you even know who you were talking to?" 

"There are five hundred students at this school; how could I -" 

"You could have tried **ASKING**!" Harcourt roared. 

Outside, Taz let out a soft, impressed whistle as that shout carried to her ears. In fact, Harcourt's words had been so powerful that Misha and Kelly could make out what was said *without* benefit of Slayer hearing. "Sounds like Gordy's *really* pissed," the albino noted cheerfully. 

Meanwhile, Glasson was almost staggering before the force of Harcourt's continuing tirade. "Because *if* you *had* bothered to ask, you would have found that all three of these students have exemplary disciplinary and academic records. Miss Hikurangi is the Head Girl, and thus a member of the Student Council; she is also a member of the Hawkes' Bay representative cricket team and *captain* of ours. 

"Miss Zyrianova, despite being a fifth-former, is taking three *sixth*-form subjects and acts as an unofficial assistant to the Physical Education department, so she enjoys a modicum of latitude in her dress and manner. Mister McKellar's condition grants him a legitimate medical exemption to the school dress rules, he's taking two sixth-form and two *seventh*-form subjects, and he's fluent in at least six languages, which makes him the school's resident interpreter and virtually a member of the faculty! 

"All three of them, Oscar, are also excellent judges of character and *superb* barometers of student sentiment." Harcourt took a moment to sit back down and moderate his anger. "What do we do here, Oscar?" 

"We're teachers. We teach students what they need to know to become useful members of society," Glasson answered almost automatically. 

"We're building tomorrow's citizens," Harcourt nodded. "And those three are *exactly* the sort of end-product we want. *You* may want to live in a society full of conformist, compliant drones, but while *I* am here, I will keep trying to mould our students into people *exactly* like those three: responsible, dedicated, and self-reliant, people who rise to challenges and seek their own answers." 

Glasson was pale, and it took him a moment to find his voice. "B-but general discipline -" 

"The school rules apply to *all* of us here, students and faculty alike; you shatter those rules for your own petty gratification and then expect them to protect you from the consequences? You're sadly mistaken, Oscar. Besides, those three know *exactly* where the boundaries of their leeway lie and while they may approach them, they have yet to overstep them. Unlike *you*, whom I can only describe as the worst sort of petty, self-indulgent, hidebound bully! Frankly, I'd be shot of you in a heartbeat, but I can't replace you this late in the year, so do yourself a favour: sit down, shut up, do your job, and take no action I could even vaguely construe as abusive of these students or any other. Your contract will be terminated at the end of the year, that much is a given... but if you're a good little boy, maybe, *just maybe*, I *won't* write to the Ministry of Education at the end of the school year and recommend the revocation of your teaching credentials for gross incompetence! **IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?**" 

Glasson was decidedly green by this point, and could only nod choppily. 

"_Fidelitas_, _Integritas_, _Fortitudo_, _Diligentia_ - Loyalty, Integrity, Courage, Diligence. Our school motto, in case you'd forgotten. Words and concepts that we try to instill into all our students; words that those three *live* and that I doubt you can even *spell*!" Letting out a huff of annoyance, Harcourt looked away from the younger man in contempt and went back to the door. "You three can come back in now." 

When all three students were standing before his desk again - the younger pair in parade-rest stance, he noted with a flicker of private amusement - Harcourt spoke levelly, without any visible sign of his earlier fury. "Mister McKellar, Miss Zyrianova, you'll serve detention at lunch-time for your smart remarks, though in light of the provocation you suffered I'll only require half an hour from each of you. Miss Hikurangi, please accept my apologies; in light of the public nature of this incident, you'll also receive a public apology from Mister Glasson at this Wednesday's assembly." Glasson sat forward in his seat, about to protest, but Harcourt glared him into sullen acquiesence. "All three of you may return to class... and in future, please try to accord Mister Glasson the respect he's due?" 

Taz sniffed. "I thought we already did, sir." 

"Probably true, Miss Zyrianova, but I'll rephrase that: you will accord him the respect his *office* is due, hmm?" He looked at the trio over his glasses, and his smile fooled none of them. 

"Yes, sir!" they chorussed, turning to depart. Kelly and Misha ignored Glasson as they left, but Taz couldn't resist the temptation to shoot him a smugly impudent wink as went out the door. 

"\What a perfect fucking asshole that Glasson is,\" she muttered as they headed back towards the classroom to collect their gear. 

"You said it," Kelly agreed readily; though she spoke not a word of Russian, Taz's sentiments needed little translation. "On the other hand, Gordy's always been a fair sort of person," she pointed out, trying not to sound smug... and not doing the best job of it, at that. She brushed past Misha, and her elbow caught him in the ribs. He gasped and went still for an instant, favouring that side. Kelly caught his pained expression and paused herself. "Misha, are you okay?" 

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, letting his breath out evenly. "I just got a little banged up over the weekend." Seeing her dubious look, he shrugged - then grinned suddenly. "Don't worry, Kelly, I plan to live forever... or die trying." 

Kelly chuckled and kept walking. 

"Uh, Kelly?" Misha said softly, touching her elbow gently. 

"Yeah?" 

"Could I get my wallet back, please?" 

"Aw, damn...." Kelly groaned, reaching into her inside jacket pocket to retrieve it for him, wondering as she did why someone whose mother was worth a solid seven figures had a nylon wallet that looked like a refugee from a two-dollar shop. "Sorry - force of habit, I didn't realise I'd done it." 

"Hey, I don't hold your criminal reflexes against you; you're from Auckland, you can't help it," he murmured dryly, and she chuckled ruefully. It had always been a point of perverse amusement to the three of them that, rather than a 'morally upright' girl with impeccable breeding and great connections, the student body had knowingly elected a bisexual Maori woman to be Head Girl of a school whose faculty and student body were predominantly Pakeha and theoretically Catholic... and in the process, had *unknowingly* elected a Head Girl who was also a practiced pickpocket, lock-cracker, burglar and all-around rogue. They also got a kick out of wondering what, exactly, that said about Saint G's in general and the students and faculty in particular. 

"And if those leads you and your family develop keep panning out like they have been, we'd probably forgive you a murder or two," Taz added drolly, in a low voice. 

"Just doing my part for the liberation movement," the seventh-former smiled, speaking at a similar volume. 

"Don't get carried away with the titles." Misha shifted his shoulders a little uncomfortably. "It isn't like there's a lot of us." 

"Yeah, but you're hitting Bloodsuckers Inc. almost as hard as they deserve," the Maori woman nodded, with a fierceness most people would have thought uncharacteristic of her... unless they'd known exactly how she'd learned about the shadow-world Taz and Misha lived in. "So I say '_vive la Résistance_!' and more power to you." 

"Speaking of which...." Misha reached into his jersey and produced a small leather wallet from his breast pocket. "I think you'll be needing this, Kelly," he smiled crookedly, tossing it to her. 

The Maori woman blinked in surprise; she'd taught them both a fair few of her tricks, but she had no idea Misha had gotten so good as to lift *her* wallet without her noticing. Then she smiled, realising how to get her own back: she batted her eyelashes at him, simpering outrageously. "Find anything *else* you liked in my back pocket?" 

"Uh... I... uhhhh...." He blushed a bright, flaming scarlet that was truly alarming against his complexion and swallowed heavily, almost visibly wishing he could disappear down between the floorboards. 

Kelly stifled a grin at his embarrassment. While neither of these two socialised much, Misha's condition made him hyper-self-conscious, so he simply didn't get out enough to recognise the signals a surprising number of girls were constantly sending his way; you had to be about as subtle as Taz(!) to get his attention, and when you *did* bash him over the head with an innuendo, he got incredibly, endearingly flustered. 

Kelly sighed as her thoughts ran that well-worn path again. Misha was utterly devoted to Taz, not only as an operating partner and best friend but as the woman he had loved and would love forever... and he would never be able to say a thing about it. Taz would never find a better man in a hundred years of trying, and she'd never know what was right under her nose unless someone bashed *her* over the head with it... and Kelly wasn't about to betray Misha's trust that way. 

_I just hope he works up the nerve to tell her before he misses his chance forever...._

Even as she was thinking, a hulking blond youth in a First XV jersey shouldered past them, knocking Misha against the wall with a growled, "Fuck outta my way, mutant!" 

_And *that* kind of bullshit doesn't help either,_ the Maori woman added silently, glaring after the rugby-head as Taz helped her friend back to his feet. The name-calling only reinforced the impression that he was a freak, unworthy of someone like Taz... but he refused to let either of them call anybody on it, lest he look like he was hiding behind his friends, and he simply took everything they could dish out. All three of them knew what could happen if the wrong people paid the wrong sort of attention to them, and they tried to stay off the radar... but that didn't make watching self-absorbed idiots abuse her friends any easier to take. 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

**14:47, SEPTEMBER 29, 1995, LIMA - _02:47/30-09-95, ZULU_  
CORNER OF DOUGLAS MACLEAN AVENUE AND LATHAM STREET, NAPIER**  


The watercourse that divided the Marewa and Napier South areas of the city from each other was more properly known as the Serpentine, but as long as Danny Szczodrowski had lived in the city, he and everyone he knew had always simply called it 'the creek'. Barely four metres wide and one deep at this point, it was the centre of a fifty-metre-wide grassy depression that was bordered on the Marewa side by MacLean Ave and the other by George's Drive; scattered as it was with trees and such, that District Council land had made an excellent playground in younger years. Four or five culverts traversed the creek, including this one at Latham Street, and Danny could remember climbing up and down the stones on its side like a budding Edmund Hillary. 

But those had been simpler days with fewer cares, and Danny firmly muzzled his desire to glare at the trio of Stormhawk troopers lounging around the beige-and-ochre Holden Commodore parked on the grass next to the culvert railing. _Fucking arrogant bastards think they *already* own this country...._

One of the Stormers looked up from jab-chatting with his fellows, saw Danny coming, and grinned as he decided to break the monotony. The other two wore the usual Stormhawk ochre-trimmed beige jumpsuit and peaked forage caps and had Browning pistols strapped to their thighs; the man approaching the teenager was dressed in the ochre Kevlar utility vest and helmet of a Tactical, both sleeves bore the two-and-a-half bars of a corporal, and he had a sub-gun slung across his body. "Halt!" he called, raising one hand at Danny. 

_And wouldn't Grand-dad Ignacy think *this* was a nice little piece of _déjà vu_ all over again?_ the fifteen-year-old thought with a touch of bitterness, noting the Stormer's German accent as he stopped. 

"Identification," the Stormer said. It was not a request. 

"Of course, officer," the youth nodded, digging out his wallet to produce his learner's driver's licence. He carefully ignored an impulse was to do the old 'Star Wars' routine about not needing identification; he'd heard stories about other kids who'd tried it, been detained by the Stormers for their trouble... and never been heard from again. 

The sergeant got on his radio and ran the youth's details by the dispatch officer while Danny waited patiently. His attention went to the other Stormers for a moment, but they were just grinning and making smart comments in their own language, enjoying the show as their comrade exercised their power simply because he (and they) could. Off to the north, a helicopter rose over Bluff Hill, apparently from the Stormer base at what had once been Napier Prison. _AS-565UB Panther,_ Danny identified automatically, his eye honed by his endless reading of military reference books, among other things. _Military version of the Eurocopter AS-365 Dauphin. Two-man flight crew; in Stormhawk service, mounts a searchlight turret, FLIR, and rescue hoist and carries up to ten fully-equipped Tactical troopers._

After a moment, the Tactical looked back to Danny, taking in the gold-trimmed royal-blue uniform of Central Napier College. "What are you doing out of school so early?" 

"Central starts its school day at eight and ends it at two-thirty, sir." 

"Where are you going?" 

"Baby-sitting job just down the street," he supplied levelly, jerking his chin at the houses beyond the Stormer; his bag tried to slip down one arm, and he barely caught it in time. "My clients' kids'll be home just after three, and I have to be inside and changed by then." 

The Stormer looked him over for a moment, appraising his manner, then handed his licence back. "You may go." 

"Thanks." _You fascist Kraut cocksucker._ Swallowing his hatred, Danny remounted his bike and pedalled off, carefully not glaring at the Stormers as he went. 

A few moments later, freshly changed into his civvies, the boy sagged onto the Zyrianov's couch with a bottle of his favourite Bundaberg ginger beer and took a long draught, wincing at the familiar bite and cursing the fates that had ever brought those goose-stepping bastards to his city. 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

**15:42, SEPTEMBER 29, 1995, LIMA - _03:52/30-09-95, ZULU_  
ZYRIANOV RESIDENCE**  


"\We're home, folks!\" Taz cried as they came through the front door. 

Katya, Taz's niece, ducked her dark-blond head through the door of the study as Misha eased the door closed behind them, then dashed to hug them both 'hello' with all the speed her ten-year-old legs would allow, saying not a word the entire time. She wasn't much of a talker. 

"Hey, kiddo," Misha smiled, kneeling to return the hug and ruffling her hair gently. "Where're Danny and Kolya?" 

"Yo!" Danny poked his head out of the study and waved 'hi'. Frankly, he wasn't all that much to write home about: he was a little taller than average, with a round face, stubbornly cowlick-y brown hair and blue eyes that always seemed a little distracted. "Kolya's on the computer - he's got a little 'Wolfenstein 3-D' thing goin' on." 

"Has he done his homework?" Taz asked sternly. 

"Yes," he nodded patiently. "Maths and English both. And, uh," (Danny's voice dropped slightly as he produced a piece of paper) "I figured you two'd want to know about this." 

Taz cocked a mental eyebrow as she accepted the note and drew both Danny and Misha to one side. Danny's father was chief air-traffic controller at the Napier airport, so he necessarily knew about all the flights that came in and out at exotic hours... which in turn meant that Danny routinely spotted all sorts of stuff for them. "Flight Victor One-One-Three," she read. "Arriving 00:30, origin... Johannesburg?" she queried, cocking an eyebrow at the fourth-former. 

"I checked with Dad. Victor is short for VIP; it's an execu-jet, chartered from Stormhawk by an outside party for protected passage all the way to the destination. I couldn't get any details about who's on board or why they're coming, but take a look at that asterisk by the callsign." Danny gave them both a serious look. "That means it'll have an escort, probably some of those German-made Alphas they run for 'aerobatic demonstrations'." 

All three snorted at that. Stormhawk might well put on aerobatic displays with those Alpha Jets... but their specifications were available to anyone who could read a _Jane's_, and none of the youths laboured under the illusion that those 'training/demonstration aircraft' had been shorn of their weapons capabilities. 

Misha nodded to Danny calmingly. "We'll see what sort of a... *reception* can be arranged." 

"Knock 'em dead, okay? The sooner these bastards get out of New Zealand, the sooner I can start picking my classes without having to look over my shoulder for the 'Specials'." 

Taz nodded. "Thanks for this, Danny." The fourth-former took his cue, grabbed his gear, and took off for his place. "Misha, could you go through the twins' homework with them, please? I'd like to check my e-mail." 

"Kolya won't like that," Katya pointed out softly. "He's just getting on a roll." 

"This is business, Katya; he can play later." 

Katya nodded and headed back into the study, followed by her aunt and Misha. They came through the door to see the kids arguing back and forth in Russian. Though fraternal twins, the two were almost as much of a study in contrasts as Misha and Taz themselves. The brown-haired, grey-eyed Kolya was possessed of his long-dead father's rakish charm and devil-may-care cockiness, despite his youth. "\Aunt Taz can *wait*! How am I supposed to save the world from those Nazi zombie experiments with all these interruptions?\" 

"Try the 'save' function?" Misha suggested drolly, stepping up behind the boy. "You can blast the baddies another time, sport. Right now, Taz needs the computer." 

"But Uncle Miiiisha -!" Kolya started to whine, looking up over his shoulder; as soon as he looked away from the screen, 'he' was cut down by a pair of SS goons. 

"Kolya, stop complaining, save your game, and go check your homework again, okay? You've both got soccer practice in half an hour, and I don't want the star striker being benched because your grandmother got another report about your poor maths skills, understand?" His tone was gently patient, but firm. 

"But -" 

Misha turned his mirrored-glasses gaze directly on the boy, the set of his mouth going from firm to stern. Kolya instantly went silent and obeyed. 

"Thanks," Katya smiled, watching her errant sibling flee upstairs as she resumed her place on the floor; a pad of paper and a couple of pencils lay on the carpet. "It's pretty hard to write short stories with all that noise in the background." 

"Is that what they've got you doing for homework?" he asked, genuinely interested. Behind him, Taz smiled fondly and sat down in front of the computer, double-clicking the Internet shortcut. 

"Yeah. It's fun," Katya smiled. 

"D'you mind if I take a look at it when you're done?" 

"Sure." 

"\Nice work with Kolya,\" Taz murmured. "\You've really put the fear of God into him since Mama started working eight-to-six.\" 

"\Fear of God, ha!\" he sniffed, careful to mind his language around Katya. "\The fear of *me* always gets better results.\" 

"\I'm not afraid of you, Uncle Misha,\" Katya chirped. 

"\That's because you're smart enough to do what you're supposed to without us having to play the heavy in the first place, kiddo,\" Misha grinned. "\I'm gonna go change, okay? Let me know if you've got anything interesting.\" 

"Right-o," Taz nodded, waiting for her inbox to finish downloading. She was just a half-skilled user of Win95, but it was an afternoon ritual to her to check both of her freemail accounts: the one she used to jab-chat with people around the world, and the one she saved for business messages. 

Misha reappeared at her shoulder just as she finished logging out, now dressed in pale-grey trousers and an LA Raiders jersey that had seen better days. "Anything?" 

"'I don't like spam!'" she snorted. "Zippo." 

"Well, that being done, I'd better stop by the George's Drive house, check for phone-messages." 

"D'you really think Cerian's gonna bother calling?" Taz snorted. "I mean, did she even tell you she was going, much less where?" 

"You never know." 

"I guess. Stay," she offered impulsively. "Read Katya's homework like you offered. *I'll* check your messages for you - once I get out of this monkey-suit." 

"You don't have to -" 

"It's okay, it won't take long. You're better at the homework thing than I am, anyway," she noted ruefully, remembering the disaster that had been her last maths assignment. "I'll be back in fifteen, 'kay?" 

"Yeah. Thanks." 

She shot him a gentle wink. "Go on, go dote on my brother's kids." 

A few minutes later, Taz returned downstairs in comfortably worn jeans and a pale grey singlet, fumbling her keys out of her pocket. She glanced into the living room as she went, smiling as she saw the way Misha was buried deep in Katya's short-story, snickering at some joke in the text. _What a crew,_ she smiled indulgently. _The very picture of domesticity. Wait - is 'domesticity' even a word? Feh - my mind, the random question generator!_

The McKellar house was only a couple of streets over. It was a bright and warm afternoon, but Taz shivered as she unlocked the front door with the duplicate key Misha had had cut for her six years ago. Like her own house, this place was two-storey and quite sizeable, but while the Zyrianov's was well-lived-in and welcoming and decorated with family knick-knacks, Cerian's house was fresh from the pages of a decorator's magazine, all clean and precise and... *impersonal*! _Hell, I've seen crypts that were more homey,_ she thought sourly, quashing the impulse to push a painting askew to break up the monotonous neatness. Misha would catch nine kinds of hell if it wasn't spick-and-span when Cerian got back - whenever that might be. 

Finding the answer-machine, Taz glanced at the message counter - _Zero? Colour *me* gobsmacked._ - and turned back to the front door, absently noting as she did that Cerian *still* hadn't gotten around to having dimmer-switches installed for any of the house lights. Elena Zyrianova had had her house rewired to accomodate Misha's eye-problems at the start of 1988, as he stayed there far more often than he did at this 'home'; Cerian still hadn't bothered. _Big shock *there*, too. That woman has yet to find a responsibility she can't duck - including Watcherly *and* filial. About all she seems to care about is the ego-stroking she gets from being anointed Lady High Priest of anthropology at Hawke's Bay Technical._

_I wonder: are all Watchers this big a waste of skin?_

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

**12:17, SEPTEMBER 29, LIMA - _11:17, 29-09-95, ZULU_  
GREYMOOR MANOR  
OUTSIDE OXFORD, UNITED KINGDOM**  


{"Sub-Coordinator (Training/Slayers) is here for your 12:30, Director."} 

Elliot Merrick looked up from the folder he was reading with an irritated frown, then carefully tucked the file under his blotter. _Let the game begin,_ Sub-Coordinator (Security/Operations) noted, keying the intercom. "Very well, Amber, send him in." 

A moment later, his personal assistant pushed open the oak doors that protected the inner sanctum of Mentor's chief, giving Quentin Travers a bright smile as she ushered him inside and withdrew again. Travers didn't even notice her discretion, simply stopping before his colleague's desk. 

Merrick didn't stand; he didn't offer his guest a chair. Those were courtesies to an equal, and in this office no-one was Merrick's equal, not even Chairman Wellesley himself. Instead, he kept his head down, pretending to read a report he'd signed off on more than two weeks before. "Quentin." 

"Might I ask what this is about, Elliot?" 

"A courtesy to my esteemed fellow Sub-Coordinator," the bearded Keystone smiled thinly, leaning back in his chair. "You've been... *upset* over the lack of information coming out of Napier, especially given the unusual circumstances surrounding Zyrianova's Calling." 

"'Upset', Elliot? Try infuriated," Travers snorted, taking a seat unbidden. "She was supposed to be brought here for training, not left in place to remain completely incapable of fulfilling her destiny. Cerian deliberately violated my orders by leaving her unprepared -" 

"On your predecessor's instructions." 

Travers stopped mid-diatribe and stared at the younger man. "What?" 

"It seems he was conducting an experiment. Most of the Slayers in our records were lavishly trained and equipped for their Calling, yet they all fell in short order - I believe the record for longevity is twenty months before we had to... take steps. That high rate of turnover is admittedly useful in some ways, yet we lack any sort of baseline to determine whether our training programme is all it could be. So, on St.John's orders, a number of candidate Slayers were left uninformed so that they would 'come at this cold' and establish just such a baseline." 

"And why did no-one inform me before now?" 

"You *do* have a certain... vested interest in the _status quo_, Quentin." 

Travers was silent for a split-second, smiling thinly as he saw past Keystone's soft words and read the game. Travers' duties as Training/Slayers gave him nominal control of what Slayers learned and how, and why should he want to change traditions that had served the Council well for more than seventeen centuries? But by taking this approach, Sec/Ops not only got the 'control standard' so precious to its 'experiment', they also removed the education of the subjects from Training/Slayers' control and arrogated them and those educations directly to the subjects' field Watchers... all of whom answered to Security/Operations. If the experiment's results proved to be beneficial, Sec/Ops reveal its involvement to the Quorum and get all the credit - and a mandate to continue in the same manner, thus stealing that much more power from Training/Slayers. On the other hand, if things turned sour Training/Slayers would take all the blame, as it would look like **Travers'** people had fallen asleep at the helm by failing to locate and train the girls. 

_And Cerian was undoubtedly more than happy to help them gore my ox,_ he added snidely, remembering his former student with a sour curl of his lip. _I taught her *everything* she knows that's more substantial than the words to 'Jerusalem', and how does she repay me? By siding with my enemies and spitting on the very traditions I sought to raise her in._

But all of that was beside the current point. "Perhaps I do have a 'vested interest'. In any case, we've heard not a single word out of McKellar in almost three years, and since another Slayer hasn't been Called we must assume that Zyrianova has at least survived this long... but without hard information about what's going on in Napier we can't make any judgements about this 'experiment' or the girl's methods." 

"Which is why I've taken steps to reestablish contact with Zyrianova and McKellar." 

"Those steps being...?" 

"Since your former protegé seems so militantly disinterested in keeping us abreast of developments, I've taken the liberty of sending someone to make an independent assessment." Merrick didn't (quite) smirk as he made Travers wait for it. 

"Who?" 

"Wesley Wyndam-Pryce." 

Travers' explosion was all Merrick could have hoped for. "*Pryce*!? For God's - he's a *child*! And a none-too-intelligent one at that, I might add! What in heaven's name were you thinking?" 

"That he's a lot brighter than you give him credit for, Quentin," Merrick said evenly, with only the faintest hint of a gloating smile. "Our school in Zürich does *not* make people Dux of their year for being stupid. And his youth is what makes him perfect for the task: as far as anyone knows, Pryce included, we've merely sent him out to Napier to garner some field-experience, hopefully enough to convince him of the seriousness of our calling." 

"He hasn't even completed his basic Watcher's training!" 

"Which is something you need to take up with Oliver, not me. How the boy could graduate from Zürich, *disappear* for a year and a half, then walk straight back into our training process bears closer examination," Keystone noted, almost to himself. "But in the meantime, the decision is made. In fact, he should be arriving in Napier in an hour or so. 

"Don't worry, Quentin," Merrick added, seeing a hint of genuine alarm on the older man's face. "I've assigned him a couple of bodyguards. Your precious nephew will be perfectly safe for the duration of his stay atop the Hawke's Bay Nexus." 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

**23:35, SEPTEMBER 29, LIMA - _11:35, 29-09-95, ZULU_  
FLIGHT V113, OVER THE TASMAN SEA**  


Henry Morrissey rapped on the execu-jet's bedroom door to wake his principal. "We're about an hour out of Napier, sir." 

"Thank you!" came from within, and Morrissey went back forward to join his colleague, Christian Hahndorf, in the lounge. Morrissey rolled his eyes, and Hahndorf nodded; as many people as they'd had to babysit in their careers as 'bodyguards', this one was a prize idiot. 

Behind that bedroom door, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce levered himself out of the (remarkably comfortable) fold-out bed, flicked on the cabin lights, and reached for his suitcase to retrieve his toiletries bag and a change of clothes. He had time for a shower and shave before the plane landed, and he'd learned that both, along with decent sleep, did a great deal to offset jet-lag. _Though *why* we must arrive at this ungodly hour, I have no idea._

Even as their passenger was turning on the water, both pilots heard an unnerving beeping coming from behind them. The co-pilot turned in his seat and look back at the enclosed compartment that had replaced the normal crew-rest bay. "What've you got, EWO?" he asked over the intercom. 

"SMART-S F-band 3-D radar ahead... also receiving signals from a C-band SPS-49(V)8 on the same bearing. Looks like one of our ships," the jet's electronic-warfare officer supplied, meaning a Stormhawk-manned Type-123 destroyer. "If it is, at this signal strength he's about two hundred and fifty clicks ahead of us." 

The pilot automatically glanced at his heads-up-display's airspeed readout, running the maths in his head as he'd learned to do before being 'retired' from Soviet Frontal Aviation. _At four-hundred-thirty-five knots, we'll enter his surface-to-air missile engagement envelope in... fifteen minutes, and overfly him in twenty. I just hope we're both reading off the same page of the code-book, or this could get really exciting really quickly._

{"Unknown rider, unknown rider, this is New Zealand warship _Vigilant_ in international waters, please identify."} 

"_Vigilant_ - that's one of ours, all right," the pilot nodded, keying his radio. "_Vigilant_, this is Flight Victor One-One-Three, international VIP charter flight inbound Napier with three pax." 

{"Victor One-One-Three, go to button seven secure."} A moment as both the destroyer and the VIP jet switched to a scrambled, coded channel. {"Victor One-One-Three, authenticate Juliet Niner Hotel."} 

The co-pilot read down his knee-board to find the correct response code and showed it to his colleague. "India One Oscar." 

{"Authentication... confirmed and valid. Victor One-One-Three, be advised we are vectoring your escort to you. They'll join from your high eleven o'clock in... twenty-three minutes."} 

Blissfully unaware of the fact that his life had hung in the balance for a few moments there, Wesley had completed his ablutions, then seated himself at the aircraft's work-desk and dug out the 'file' he'd been given before leaving London to re-read it one last time. Not that it took long: 'file' was entirely too generous a term, since all he'd actually been given was an A5 envelope holding a single note-card: 

{Tatyana Zyrianova - Slayer  
Peter McKellar - trainee Watcher  
Cerian McKellar, Ph.D - assigned Watcher} 

_Well, *this* is *wonderfully* helpful!_ the twenty-one-year-old Watcher-apprentice thought acidly, dropping the card back its envelope and digging a Zippo and a packet of panatelas out of his inside pocket. Lighting one of the slender cigars, he touched the lighter's flame to the corner of the envelope, dropped it into the desk's ashtray, and watched it consume itself with clinical eyes. _Certainly can't afford for anyone to find *that*, or there'd be all sorts of hell raised!_ When the flames flickered out, he carefully crumpled the ashes until they no longer resembled anything even vaguely paper-looking, then stood to head forward. If he was going to be getting off a plane past midnight in the Slayer's town, he'd best have a cup of coffee or two under his belt. 

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

**00:35, TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 30, 1995, LIMA - _12:35, 29-09-95, ZULU_  
NAPIER AIRPORT**  


It would be natural to assume that an intercontinental-range VIP aircraft landing at a nominally domestic airfield would draw a certain degree of curiosity. But this was *Napier*, and with only a very few exceptions, the locals had learned that it was better for their piece of mind - and personal safety - if they paid no attention to the abnormal. 

Two of the exceptions were crouched behind a crate in the primary cargo bay, looking very little like what the 'normal' world usually saw of them. 

Taz had unbraided her hair and, as always on a caper, pinned it back in a ruthless bun. The eyes that usually gleamed with deviltry were coolly professional as they tracked the taxiing aircraft; her face was darkened with cam-cream. This wasn't a full take-down _per se_, so they'd gone with the basic 'Midnight Uniform #1' for better mobility and stealth: slacks, blouse and wool jumper over slimline Spectra vests, and souvenired USMC forage caps - every last stitch in midnight-blue, for better night-time camouflage, relieved only by black Danner combat boots and military-issue web-gear. Taz's webbing and utility belt supported a tactical thigh-holster holding her customised Glock-22, with two magazines strapped to the inside of her thigh; a modified ammo-pouch at her right hip held four stakes carved of white oak; a standard pouch at her left hip held three spare MP-5 magazines; and her Ka-Bar was sheathed on her left shoulder-strap, point up. Her MP-5SD6 rested against the crate, well within easy reach. 

Beside her, Misha was also watching the aircraft, albeit through the viewfinder of a digital camcorder. His clothing and equipment differed from her only in detail; he preferred the HK Mark-23 .45 as a pistol, and the knife at his right shoulder-strap was a Cold Steel _tanto_... but the look in his eyes was the same. It was the efficient, dispassionately appraising ruthlessness of the professional Warrior. 

"Jackpot," Misha noted wryly, his pitch softer than breath, all the while getting footage of the whole scene. "Remind me to buy our friend a crate of that battery-acid he drinks." 

"Got'cha," Taz nodded, matching his volume. "Interesting bird." 

"Yeah," Misha nodded, getting imagery of the execu-jet's details. He wasn't a professional camera-man, but the pictures would still be useful for later analysis. "Looks like they've got electronic warfare gear built into that fairing ahead of the tailplane. Templar livery, too," he added as the aircraft came to a halt. Indeed, the aircraft *was* in the ochre-trimmed beige of the Templar Trading Group... but for some reason, it lacked the swooping-hawk-clutching-a-lightning-bolt of the SSF. 

"Show-time," Taz breathed into her boom-mike, advising Andrushka in his overwatching sniper-hide. The jet's airstairs swung down, and a pair of men whose watchful demeanours screamed 'bodyguard' emerged, their jackets unbuttoned and their right hands free; the larger looked like a human Rottweiler, his companion like a Dobermann. A moment later, a third man disembarked, and Misha zoomed in to get a better look at the VIP. 

_And doesn't *he* look like three-penny'orth of God-help-us,_ he smiled to himself. While the gunsels were pushing forty, this guy was barely twenty if he was a day; tall, bespectacled, dark-haired and a little vague-looking, he had the air of breeding that was virtually unique to the English. 

A car had pulled up a few minutes ago to wait for the plane to land; now, it pulled out onto the tarmac to collect the new arrival. Misha noted, with a touch of surprise, that the young man seemed to resent his bodyguards' presence, much less their doing things like getting his bags and opening doors. 

"Just a moment!" he frowned an instant later. Rottweiler had gotten into the car to go with the VIP to wherever they were bound; Dobermann had stayed. Now, as the flight-crew headed for the crew lounge and ground-crewmen in Templar livery started refuelling the jet and checking all the various widgets, the remaining bodyguard was digging something out of the baggage compartment. "What's he up to?" 

"Beats me," Taz shrugged. 

The growl of high-bypass turbines from overhead drew their attention. The charter-jet's escorts must have run low on fuel, because a few instants later, both landed and taxied towards the hangar next to the cargo bay. _'Aerobatic display jets' - *my arse*!_ Misha sneered, getting more pictures of the Alphas before they shut their engines down right outside and were pushed under cover by the technicians before anyone noticed. Officially, the Dornier Alpha Jet was a training jet, like the RNZAF's MB-339 Aermacchis, *but*.... _Let me see: the external fuel tanks on the inner pylons, I'd accept, but the centreline pod for a 27mm cannon? The Sidewinders on the outer pylons? Yeah, right._

"Heads up!" Taz hissed, and the albino shifted his attention back to Dobermann. He was headed *their* way - and he was looking around for someone. 

_And here there are!_ Two other men came into the cargo area through a side door, moving towards the desk that sat barely four metres from where the Slayer and her partner were hiding. Both youths went very still as the men stopped at the desk, the one in the business suit sitting down and laying a briefcase on the desk while his companion - wearing a Tactical sergeant's gear and insignia - stood behind his shoulder. 

Dobermann came to a halt in front of the desk, eyeing the Tactical for a moment before turning his attention on the suited man. None of the three looked like they had much in the way of a sense of humour. 

The suit looked up with a superior expression. "\You are Hahndorf?\" he asked in German. Only Misha understood them, but what was happening was pretty self-evident anyway. 

"\You are Lohrfeld?\" Dobermann asked in turn, his tone level. 

"\I believe you have a package for me?\" 

Dobermann - Hahndorf - laid his burden on the desk: a long, flat wooden case about a metre long and a foot wide, well-polished and decorated, a little travel-worn, but evidently an antique. 

Lohrfeld tugged the case to him and popped the latches, inspecting whatever was inside. Nodding in satisfaction, he pushed at the briefcase he'd brought. "\As agreed: five hundred thousand D-Mark for you as a delivery fee, and five million pounds for your employer.\" 

Hahndorf cocked an eyebrow and likewise popped open the case he'd just accepted. "\I think I'll count it. It's not that I don't trust you - it's just that I don't trust you.\" 

Taz touched one hand to her headset, keying her boom-mike, four clicks, then three. _Transaction in progress. Move in._

{*click*-*click*} _Acknowledged._

She gave Misha his final instructions in military sign-language, not wanting to alert the keen-eared vampires. Her best friend/fellow operator nodded, shot her a good-luck wink, and moved off. 

When she'd gotten 'ready' click-codes from both her companions, Taz took a deep breath to steady her nerves, then stepped into the open behind Hahndorf with empty hands and an innocent expression. "Excuse me, guys; Customs Service Special Branch, I'm afraid I'll have to see some identification," she deadpanned. 

All three froze like possums in spotlights; the suit stared at her in fear and hatred, the two gunsels in tense unease. 

"Slayer!" Lohrfeld hissed, snatching the wooden case to his chest, his face Shifting. 

The word broke the tableau. The Tactical snatched for his sidearm; Hahndorf's right hand flashed under his jacket. 

Taz crossed the two paces between Hanhdorf and herself in a blur. As his gun-hand came up and out, she swung both her still-empty hands up and around; the heel of her right hand struck inside his wrist, the heel of the left struck halfway up his forearm. The double blow snapped both bones in his arm and sent his pistol tumbling away. Taz reversed her right hand's motion, bringing it up and around in a smooth, precise arc, its bladed edge crushing in the side of the man's skull like an eggshell. The gunsel choked, spasmed once, and dropped straight down, dead before he began falling. 

The Tactical caught motion in his peripheral vision, turned - and caught the leading edge of Misha's bladed hand right in the larynx. His windpipe folded in, and he crumpled, choking for breath that would never come. 

Even as the two humans fell, Lohrfeld scrambled to his feet. In one motion, Taz's hand dropped to her hip, snatched out a stake, whipped forward in a smooth underhand cast. The throw was perfect; the stake caught Lohrfeld in the centre of his chest, a mere centimetre to the left of his sternum, and the case dropped back onto the desk with a soft *clunk* as he crumbled into dust. 

_All three bad guys down, and no-one heard a thing._ "Damn, we're good," she grinned. 

"Yeah, but now we've got to hide the bodies." 

"Why?" Andrushka breathed, coming in through the same door Lohrfeld and his escort had come through, his scoped G-3 at the low port. "Just add 'em to the mess we're gonna make." He nodded at the hangar next door, where the Alphas were being turned around, and the two younger operators shared a fierce grin as they caught his meaning. _Target of opportunity!_

Short, stocky, and sixty, Andrew Hazelton was Taz's favourite and only uncle, a man with a kindly face made leathery by the elements and a fighting edge honed by forty years' experience at not dying - with the NZSAS. He had his tender side, though he hid it behind the usual cynical macho stoicism, but he was first and foremost a killer of evil men. Officially, he'd retired from the Army ten years ago and now worked as a longshoreman; unofficially, he was still one of the Squadron's go-to men and their leading CQB instructor. He'd said it himself: 'old operators never die - they just go back to hell to regroup'. 

"Let's police these jokers first, huh?" Misha suggested, kneeling beside his victim to strip off his gunbelt and still-holstered BDA and go through his pockets for jewellery, wallet, valuables, and - most importantly - anything of intelligence value. The valuables would go towards their operating funds, and the weaponry to their 'deniable' arsenal. 

Taz did likewise with her kill. She pursed her lips in a silent whistle as she retrieved Hahndorf's weapon: a selective-fire Glock-18, loaded with a nineteen-round magazine of 124-grain 9mm StarFire hollowpoints. _Very nice. And hideously illegal for anyone outside of the military or 'security forces'._ Tossing that into the bag Andrushka was carrying, she started looking Hanhdorf over for other items of - "This is interesting," she murmured, intrigued. "Two, bring that camera over here." 

Misha obeyed, quickly getting footage of what she'd discovered: an intricate, multi-coloured tattoo just under the man's left collarbone. "I wonder what that's in aid of?" he mused. 

"We'll worry about it later. Let's move." 

Implementing Andrushka's suggestion wasn't all that hard. The hangar housing the two Alphas was guarded by a brace of Tacticals out front, and both jet pilots and half a dozen techs were inside, but that was why the two youths had brought suppressed weapons. The shooting was brief and (since only the Tacticals were armed) entirely one-sided, more in the nature of a massacre than a true firefight, but these men had chosen to wear the uniform that made them the enemy and with the memory of the Sundown Club and a half a hundred other capers just like it seared into their memory, the teens felt no inclination towards mercy. Andrushka and Misha quickly hauled all the bodies, including the two from the cargo bay, into the hangar and arranged them around the two Alphas while Taz rigged finger-charges on each bird's external fuel-tanks and set the fuses for fifteen minutes. With the fighters almost completely loaded with fuel and armed so heavily, the entire hangar would be incinerated when the explosives went off. 

"Anvil, get on that other charge!" Taz hissed. "Start the fuse in three, two, one, *go*." 

"Burning!" the veteran nodded. "Let's be elsewhere!" 

With that, the trio collected the two cases out of the cargo bay and headed for Andrushka's ute, parked outside a house opposite the airport's main gate. Thankfully, the (vampire) Stormers walking the perimeter fence were well away from the gap the interlopers had cut then tied shut with flex-cuffs; they cut the cuffs and hauled ass out again, climbed into the ute, and were a good three clicks away by the time the charges went off. 

Andrushka regarded the flash and glow in the rear-view mirror with a thin smile of satisfaction. "Smile, you bastards: you're on Candid Claymore," he smirked in his thick Cockney accent. 

"Uh-huh," Misha nodded, with a smirk of his own. "The job may suck from time to time, but there are days when you've just gotta love the work." _And what's more, taking out the Alphas and their mob makes it look like we were there for *them* and got the other three by accident - which casts doubt on whether we knew the execu-jet was coming and may keep them from realising that we've got a source in the ATC system._

"I wonder...." Taz said thoughtfully. Like Misha, she was sitting in the back seat, having already shed her web-gear; now she twisted in her seat and dragged Hahndorf's case into her lap. 

"What's that?" Andrushka asked. 

She popped the latches, not looking up at her uncle. "Well, Lohrfeld was paying big bikkies for this, right?" 

"Five million quid, by what he said - and that *is* pounds Sterling, too," Misha confirmed. 

"So what was he buying, and why?" She answered that question by flipping the case's lid open. "What the...?" 

Misha pursed his lips. "*Very* nice...." he breathed, looking at the contents. Andrushka gave him a curious look in the mirror, and Misha glanced up for a second to explain. "Weapons. Old ones, and Chinese by the looks of them. A _wu shu kien_, nicely decorated but very effective-looking at that; a Chinese sabre; a three-section staff; and a pair of _tonfa_. Question is..." (he looked up at Taz, and his eyes were concerned behind his tinted goggles) "why are they worth so much, and what does Gerry want them for?" 


	4. Ch03: One link in a chain reaction

DISCLAIMER:  
If you think I own 'Buffy' or any of the canon, seek psychiatric help. :-) Barring Wesley, Travers, and maybe Merrick, everybody here is mine, all mine. 

Character visualisation tip: while the physical resemblance is limited, anyone who's seen '_Forever Knight_' would think Gerhardt von Hausmann and Lucien laCroix went to the same school of 'Being a Bad-Ass Master Vampire'. :-)

* * *

****

**CONTROLLED CIRCUMSTANCES - Part Three**

****

* * *

One shot in a revolution, one drop from a poison pen,  
One fruit too small and bitter, one tree too proud to bend,  
One man to start the trouble, one kiss to seal your fate,  
One kid that needs some action, one link in a chain reaction.... 

_'Chain Reaction', John Farnham_

* * *

**04:12, TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 1995, LIMA (16:12/25-09-95 ZULU)  
OFFICES OF TEMPLAR ENTERPRISES/VON HAUSMANN'S LAIR**

"What is it, Rechner?" asked Charles Worthington, President/CEO Stormhawk Security Services, not turning to face his number-two as he studied the painting on the wall. A painting of himself, as he'd been just before he was Turned: a spare, aristocratic, self-impressed fellow, wearing the finest suit Savile Row could offer - and the brassard of the Imperial Fascist League, the British Nazi party. Now he wore the finest Armani and the collar-pin of the New Zealand Free Republican Party... but the rest hadn't changed much. 

"News about our delivery, sir." Rechner's voice was the model of respect, masking his abiding contempt for his boss: Stormhawk's staggeringly successful 'Trojan Horse' marketing strategy had been Worthington's brainchild. Nobody harboured any illusions about his ambition, and he made no bones about resenting Rechner's stance of reasoned moderation - or that it had won him the _Freiherr_'s favour from the outset. "Once the fires at the hangar were extinguished, we identified the bodies. One was Lohrfeld's assigned bodyguard; another has been tentatively matched to the description of the man he was to meet. Both had been picked clean, and there was no trace of either the money or the merchandise." _Or Lohrfeld,_ he didn't have to add. 

"I see." Worthington deliberately took a black push-pin from a container and thumbed them into the map at the oversized symbol that stood for the airport - joining a cluster of others - then turned and walked across the room, still outwardly calm and human. He stayed that way until he reached the human standing next to Rechner, an aide from the COO's analytical staff - then let out a bellow of animal rage, Shifted visages, and almost casually backhanded the man across the chest, smashing him back against the wall. Bones crunched under his arm, and blood sprayed across the polished hardwood floor. The door-guards, SPG troopers wearing the black facings of von Hausmann's personal Praetorians, looked on in poorly-hidden horror as Worthington plunged his hands right into the flesh of the man's back at shoulder and hips, seized him by his spinal column, lifted him shoulder-high, and broke his spine like a schoolboy snapping a ruler. 

Rechner flinched, horrified by Worthington's stupidity. _Oh, that's going to do **wonders** for morale!_

"You were supposed to have taken **CARE** of them by now!" the former Englishman roared, flinging the corpse aside and rounding on Rechner, unmindful of the gore coating his arms and spreading across the floor like a crimson lake. 

Rechner caught the SPGs' attention and sent them outside with a tip of his head. _We need them to believe us united and strong - not going for each others' throats like we're about to._ That done, he turned back to his superior and inwardly braced himself. He'd always given his superiors the truth straight from the shoulder; like many in power, Worthington wasn't much of a fan of unpleasant truths, but anything less than absolute candour would be an invitation to disaster for them all. "**How**, sir? They're too cagey. They've never left a single survivor who'd seen their faces, so we have no descriptions; the DNA samples we have don't match any of the profiles in the police systems that we've been able to access. The structure of Stormhawk's contract with the government precludes our mounting an overt, active investigation, and just enough of the national police know just enough about us, and them, to make the value of their help questionable at best. These 'Wraiths' choose the targets they hit at short notice, with little reconnaissance to tip us off; we can't be strong enough everywhere to deter an attack, and without advance warning we can't set an ambush for them. 

"And butchering a valuable intelligence tool like a well-trained analyst in a fit of pique doesn't help our cause either," he added acidly, indicating the shattered corpse. "Men like Shakirov aren't cheap to train or especially easy to find, and we need their talents if we're to shut down _Nga Kehua_'s operations. He was supposed to brief you on our counter-intelligence efforts; it'll be hard for him to do that now - unless you intend to convene a séance." 

"You forget yourself, Rechner!" Worthington snapped. 

"_Still_," a soft, almost gentle voice inserted from the armchair in the corner. All eyes turned to regard the figure that sat in that chair like a dragon reposing atop its hoard... the embodiment of power, momentarily dormant and indolent, amused by the antics of its lessers - for now. 

It was odd, but in his human visage, Gerhardt, _Freiherr_ von Hausmann looked positively inoffensive. Only of average height, he was a bulky, square-faced fellow, with a slightly rugged look one might expect more of a blue-collar worker than a corporate executive... which was one of the many reasons for his business successes. He was something of a chameleon, in Rechner's eyes: by turns the avuncular, charming president of the Templar Trading Group and darling of the media; when dealing with his troops, the staggering, almost hypnotic oratical presence that rivaled Hitler himself; the subtle, keen-minded political animal who had once given pointers to Cesar Borghia and Niccolo Machiavelli; and like right now, the sheer, dominating force-of-personality that was the (figurative) living, beating heart that drove the _Ordo Astra_ onwards. Many vampires claimed the title 'master', many without anything resembling real justification. Gerhardt von Hausmann was the real deal without even trying. 

Even when the Baron had been a member of the Teutonic Knights, he'd always been the sort to out-manoeuvre an enemy politically, economically or tactically rather than smash him head-to-head, to work indirectly and through proxies rather than take the fight to an opponent personally. Why someone with so subtle a mind would let someone as crude and brutal as Worthington hold power for any length of time was quite beyond Rechner's comprehension. 

_No,_ the Baron's chosen Warrior admitted to himself. _Who am I trying to fool? I know **exactly** why he uses Worthington, just as I know exactly why he uses me. In a court full of sycophants who tell him what they think he wants to hear, I tell him what he needs to know; as well as his general-in-chief, I am his 'voice of reason' and his moral 'insider's perspective' on what we do and how it is seen. Worthington is a brutal, petty-minded thug - but he will do the things I refuse to, like suggesting and implementing the 'marketing strategy' that brought us to where we are today._

"Rechner is right, Charles," the Baron continued in his cultured English, his tone only gently chiding. "You don't destroy valued assets just when you need them most, and you don't throw temper-tantrums where they can be seen unless you're making a point." 

"Sir, I -!" 

Von Hausmann lifted one finger - no more than a centimetre - and Worthington shut up so fast it was amazing he didn't bite off his own tongue in the process. **That** was power. **That** was Gerhardt von Hausmann. "Could they have known of the meeting, Rechner?" 

"Directly? I doubt it. Only seven individuals had that information; three of those are dead, three others are in this room, and I can see no reason why our connection in London would betray us. It seems more likely that they learned of the aircraft somehow, planned to destroy the escort fighters, and ambushed the deal as a target of opportunity." 

"A bloody expensive one!" Worthington muttered sourly. 

Von Hausmann paid him no attention. "What of the aircraft and its passengers?" 

"The charter was arranged by the Watcher's Council through their front organisation, the British Museum. We can't trace the money any further than that." 

"Do we have any pictures of the man?" 

"Lohrfeld was meant to give the courier a phone-number; once his supposed principal was settled in, he was to call us with a name, description, and other particulars. Unfortunately, _Nga Kehua_ pre-empted that contingency. A team was assigned to follow him," Rechner added as evenly as he could, "but Director Worthington stood them down as 'a wasteful extravagance'." 

"The Council wouldn't be stupid enough to send someone out here who might rock the boat," Worthington explained, giving Rechner a poisonous look. "They need us too much." 

"I see," the _Freiherr_ mused. "So now, a man whose capabilities we haven't measured and whose agenda we can't predict is roaming Napier completely unknown and unsurveilled, and we may have lost a golden opportunity to find and kill this Slayer... all on your judgement?" 

Vampires can't blanche, but that didn't stop Worthington. "M-My Lord, I-I doubt he would be stupid enough to lead us to the Slayer -" 

"This, from someone who did exactly that fifty years ago?" Von Hausmann looked away from him. "Rechner, do what you can about finding him. What was Shakirov going to say?" 

Rechner knelt by the pool of gore to retrieve the folder Shakirov had been carrying; as he'd feared, it had been soaked through and all the documents within were completely illegible. "I assigned him to analyse _Nga Kehua_'s operating patterns, specifically where they hit and the list of people who knew the value of those locations. That would have allowed us to identify their sources, so we could either neutralise them or use them against _Nga Kehua_. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge that analysis was recorded in only two places: this file, and Shakirov's brain. Neither of which is now available to us. Reconstructing that information will be an uncertain, time-consuming and expensive process, sir." 

"Have your people try anyway. Their attacks are too precise to be guesswork." 

"I must concur, My Lord, but there's another consideration," an ashen-faced Lieutenant-Colonel Ilya Stefanovich Krukovskiy added from his seat before Worthington's desk, trying to brush the dead analyst's blood from his uniform. The sector commander's rank-badges had the black edging of the SPG, but unlike most of his subordinates, who were former-Comm-Bloc military, he'd come to Stormhawk as surplus from the KGB. "I'm sure I don't need to remind you of how... **sensitive** Operations Bastille and Robespierre are, particularly the aspects pertaining to our public image. Sooner or later, the New Zealand government will start getting suspicious about this string of 'accidents' we've suffered and step in, in one way or another. We can't keep spin-controlling these incidents forever; even now, we may not have admitted they exist, but _Nga Kehua_'s campaign is an open secret in the city, and it's eroding our troops' authority among the citizenry. Not to mention the effect they're having on morale and the troops' nerves: sooner or later, someone's going to get too jumpy and there'll be a bloodbath." 

"As if there haven't been already," Rechner murmured in his native tongue, knowing Krukovskiy understood him and not particularly caring. 

"I'm simply following my orders, Rechner," Krukovskiy smirked acidly. "Wasn't that what your Nazi comrades always said?" 

Only Rechner's knowledge of how much the _Freiherr_ needed this human as a **live** stalking horse kept him from ripping the man's face off on the spot - unChanged. His expression never even flickered; Krukovskiy would never know how close he came to dying in that instant. Nazism be damned: he'd fought because it had been his duty, and he'd done it with dedication, courage, and above all honour. Like many of his fellows, he'd been a professional soldier, first, last, and always, and the butchery perpetrated by the Nazis had turned his stomach... as did the deeds perpetrated by those of his 'fellows' and sept-brothers who served in the Special Purposes Group. 

The city's Stormer commander looked back to his vampiric master. "My Lord, the... transaction you have planned for Sunday morning. Without the courier's delivery, how will you proceed?" 

"There are alternatives," von Hausmann shrugged, still not the least perturbed. "The terms _Tin Tei Wui_ offered were... flexible. Granting them a share of the methamphetamine market in New Zealand -" 

"Would only give them ideas about competing with us in that market, My Lord," Krukovskiy countered as forcefully as he dared. Which wasn't very. 

"If we don't give them something, our supply of food-slaves will be almost halved!" Worthington snarled at the human. "If that shortage closes the hospitality clubs, we'll lose that much more revenue, and buying more will be even harder! Without those clubs as a control mechanism, the rank-and-file clansmen and all the indigents will start to get ideas about finding their own food, and that sort of thinking would lend itself to rebellion and anarchy!" 

_And what of the humans' reactions to such a contingency?_ Rechner wondered acidly, noting one of Worthington's curious blind spots: he never considered how the humans over which he sought dominion might react to this or that. Leaving aside military and moral concerns, the public-relations aspect alone could be disastrous. _And considering that a mere handful of humans are playing hob with our operations here, I can't understand how he can think like that._

_Wait a minute. Humans' reactions...._ Rechner crossed to the map, half-listening to the snowballing argument behind him as an idea percolated through his mind. _We can't ambush _Nga Kehua_ because we don't know where they'll choose to strike next, but if we choose the place **for** them...._

"Rechner!" von Hausmann called to him, cutting the two squabbling executives off in mid-sentence. 

"Sir?" he blinked, his full attention turning back to his liege-lord. 

"You have something?" 

"I was just... thinking." 

Von Hausmann cocked his head and motioned for him to continue. This was, after all, why he'd chosen _Oberscharführer_ Rechner as an advisor, however inconveniently independent he might be. 

"The main problem right now is _Nga Kehua_. If we take them out of the equation, the club trade will normalise, we'll stop hemorraging troops, matérial, funds and food here in Napier, and Operations Bastille and Robespierre will be secure." 

"Stop stating the obvious and get to the point!" Worthington snapped. 

"Have you never heard of 'laying the groundwork', Charles?" Von Hausmann's gaze crossed to the youngest vampire present. "Continue, Rechner." 

"We can't hope to catch up with the Wraiths - so we shouldn't try. We should get out ahead of them and wait for them." 

"How?" 

It took Rechner less than a minute to lay out his thinking. When all was said and done it was an elegantly simple operational-concept, but that didn't stop his fellows from voicing objections. Loud ones. 

"And who'll lead the assault company? You?" Worthington sneered. _And when _Nga Kehua_ are dealt with, you'll be the audacious hero who pulled it off, won't you, Erik?_ his expression added. 

_I'm a **soldier**, Worthington; don't judge me by your politician's standards._ "I was actually thinking that Colonel Krukovskiy should lead the counter-force. After all, there's little that could improve Stormhawk's public reputation more than the commander of the Napier sector personally leading the neutralisation of a terrorist cell that the regular police wouldn't even admit existed." 

"What you propose is an awful risk, Rechner." Von Hausmann had observed the by-play between his subordinates with a keen eye, and as always, Rechner got the uncomfortable feeling that he'd known exactly what they had both been thinking. "It had better work." 

"You're going along with this, My Lord?" Worthington gaped. 

"Conventional avenues are yet to yield results; a calculated gamble would seem to be in order." Von Hausmann turned a cold smile on Worthington. "That is, if you approve, Director." 

Worthington wasn't quite that stupid. Any dissent would be tantamount to mutiny - and mutineers inside the _Ordo Astra_ led existences that were as eventful as they were abbreviated. _And I can't make it to the top of the Order if I'm packed away in a thimble somewhere._ "Very well, Erik, you'll have the troops you need for this - what are you calling it?" 

Rechner thought for half a moment, then smiled thinly. "Operation Siren." 

- - - - - - - -

**05:19, SEPTEMBER 26, LIMA (17:19/25-09-95 ZULU)  
ZYRIANOV RESIDENCE**

Misha eased the bedroom door open and peered inside. Sure enough, Taz was still curled up snugly under the covers, only one arm and her braid visible, muffled snores the only sound in the pre-dawn stillness. He shook his head fondly and breathed, "Taz." 

Her response was muffled by the pillow. "Mmph." 

_Every morning, the same sneckin' thing._ He sighed and slipped into the room to stand at the foot of the bed. "A-hem." 

"Grrmmmmph." 

He kicked the end of the bed gently. _Just enough to shake the cobwebs loose._ "Up and at 'em, Atom Ant." 

She turned her face free of the pillow and managed, "Blrrrrggh!" without opening her eyes. 

"Taz -!" 

"I know, I know," she groaned, her voice sleep-slurred and distinctly surly. "It's 0520 - time for our morning run." She threw off the covers and sat up, bleary-eyed. "I swear, if I ever find out who invented the concept of 'morning', I'm gonna go jump up and down on his friggin' grave." It was an oft-repeated threat. 

"What're you talking about? It's a brand new day!" Misha chirped. This was one of their oldest running jokes: the woman who spent most of the day operating at 125% started those days with an hour or so as an extra from a '_Living Dead_' movie, while he, whose condition specifically barred him from making full use of the day, always woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It was one of the many idiosyncracies that gave her such a lock on his heart. "Fifteen kays ought to wake your ideas up." 

She gave her best friend a filthy look. "You just enjoy my misery." 

He didn't answer that directly. "C'mon, MacGyver, kick it loose." 

Sticking her tongue out at him for a moment, she headed for her dresser, absently stripping off her singlet as she went. Misha quickly averted his eyes - she only ever slept in a tee and briefs - but not before he caught sight of the old scar on her belly, just above her left hip: a nice, neat white circle about the size of his palm. He'd been there when she stopped that bullet, and a more terrifying moment he'd never had in his life. 

When she'd slung on a fresh tee and a set of track-pants, Taz sat back on the edge of the bed and started hauling on her socks and jogging shoes. "Where are we going today?" 

"Figured we'd head south, take a look at the Ravensdown 'fertiliser plant' as we went." 

Taz nodded absently. Napier wasn't really a large city; depending on their route, they could go right around half the main suburbs if they chose. Their morning jogs served to maintain their physical fitness, granted, but they doubled as reconnaissance patrols: they could unobtrusively check out anything they ran past - including Templar installations, drug-houses, Stormer checkpoints, what-have-you - and familiarise themselves with the street layouts and normal patterns of activity. That way, they'd know if anything was out of place and anticipate problems. _Not to mention the way we can lop off any vampires who might be up this close to daybreak,_ she added to herself with a feral grin, strapping a sheathed Ka-Bar to her right calf and tugging her pants-leg back down over it. A twin-sheath went on the other calf, holding a pair of stakes that had started life as three-quarter-inch dowel in the Saint G's woodwork shop. Those concealed sheathes were a bitch to get at quickly, but they beat the hell out of being unarmed - yet one more lesson they'd learned the hard way. 

Of course, it wasn't just the stray fangs they had to worry about. Being carded by Stormer checkpoints was almost routine, and twice they'd been stopped where there weren't any onlookers and escaped being 'detained for questioning' only through the application of extreme violence. And leaving no survivors. The fact that out of the total of seven Tacticals who'd stopped them on those occasions, three had been vampires, spoke volumes about their probable fate if they'd gone quietly. 

Taz shook her head as she tied her sneakers. _Woolgathering again. God, do I need coffee!_ "Okay, Mister Sadist, let's get going." 

- - - - - - - -

Elena was waiting for them on the verandah when they returned a little over an hour later. One might expect the mother of the defender of humanity to be a haughty, vaguely aristocratic woman, much inclined to parenting by _diktat_ and unforgiving of shortcomings. 

Oops. 

Elena Gregoriyevna Zyrianova was in her early fifties, classically beautiful, but she also weighed five kilos more than she should have and Tatyana, her youngest child, already stood two inches taller than her parent. Her shoulder-length chestnut hair was streaked with silver, and though she was good-looking and knew it, she wasn't quite vain enough to resort to dye, despite her profession as the boutique manager in Napier's most expensive hotel. Her grey eyes were gently wise, and she was fully inclined to mother anyone who'd give her half the chance, including her half-brother (despite his being a good eight years older). Even now, she sat on the verandah steps, waiting for her daughter and her more-or-less foster-son with a smile, two tall glasses of sports-drink, and Taz's real operating fuel: a large mug of coffee laced with milk and seasoned with cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, triple caffeine and four heaped spoonfuls of brown sugar. The stuff was strong enough to jump out of the cup and belt you between the eyes if you weren't careful. 

Taz came to a halt, grinning widely, only the thinnest sheen of sweat on her face and her breathing deeper than usual but regular and unlaboured. "G'morning, Mama," she smiled, starting her warm-down exercises almost as she reached the steps. No point stiffening up at the start of the day, after all. 

Misha came to a halt right next to Taz, sweating and puffing no more than she was, which was admirable considering that he had none of her Slayer powers. His smile was genuine, but as always a little crooked. "Hey, Elena. Catch you at a bad time?" 

Elena rolled her eyes. She loved the boy to death, but it was beyond her how someone with so much of the weight of the world on their shoulders could be so chirpy, much less at such an early hour - especially since she knew they'd only made it to bed just after two o'clock. "Not at all, Misha. In fact, Andrei dropped some documents by while you were running, and asked me to give them to the both of you. Something about your 'new arrival'?" 

He might have blinked, but the mirror-shades made it impossible to tell. "That was quick, even for The Boys," he observed, starting his own stretches. 

"Makes you wonder what they found," Taz agreed. Finished with her warm-down, she shot her mother a grin and virtually snatched up the waiting mug. "**Coffee!**" 

"You sound like the Cookie Monster getting a fix, Taz," Misha smiled. 

She shot him a finger even as she half-drained the mug. You could virtually hear the stuff affecting her system, like a jet turbine spinning up from idle to full-throttle. 

"Those files are on the table inside. I don't want either of you getting into Slayer homework until you've showered, changed, and had breakfast, clear? I know how engrossed you two get in your work." 

"Yes, Mama," Taz smiled. 

"Understood, ma'am," Misha nodded. 

- - - - - - - -

**07:44, SEPTEMBER 26, LIMA (19:44/25-09-95 ZULU)  
ZYRIANOV RESIDENCE**

Misha was just finishing the Windsor knot on his tie as he walked into the kitchen. Taz, who (as always) he'd given first shot at getting cleaned up, was (as always) whirling about the kitchen in a manner almost identical to that of her cartoon namesake, simultaneously reading through a file-folder, piling butter and jam onto two more pieces of toast, putting yet more bread in the toaster, and dropping her oversized lunch-box into her school-bag. Nikolai and Katerina were also getting ready for school, and whether the two of them were more in Elena's way than Taz on her own was a matter of opinion. 

"Hey, hey, hey: Kolya, Katya, sit down and eat like civilised people, okay?" he called. 

"But Auntie Taz is eating standing up," Kolya protested, with the near-incontestable logic peculiar to children. 

"Perhaps, but then again she's not playing chase'em in the kitchen," Misha pointed out. 

Katya took the hint, grabbed her protesting sibling by the collar, and dragged him into the living-room so they could watch cartoons while they ate. 

"Thanks, Misha," Elena sighed, heading for the lounge herself to keep an eye on her rambunctious grandchildren. "Those two are almost as much of a handful as you and Tatyana were at that age." 

"I'll... take that in the spirit it was intended, ma'am," he grinned crookedly. When Elena had departed, he crossed to the counter, reached around the Slayer, and swiped one of her ready pieces of toast, eyeing the half-centimetre-thick layer of raspberry conserve with a wry half-smile; while their lifestyle was very energy-intensive, he'd always been of the opinion that Taz had a broad streak of the closet sensualist in her. 

She shot him a twinkling-eyed dirty look as he poached part of her breakfast - notwithstanding the fact that she'd already demolished a third of a loaf of bread without slowing down - then set about the surviving slice as she read. "Well, well, well...." 

"Come again?" he asked, setting his food aside to shrug into his blazer. 

Taz almost absently reached over and cranked up the radio on the window-sill; while the music drowning out their _sotto voce_ conversation wouldn't completely defeat modern listening devices, it would certainly make their life harder without **looking** like a security measure. _And let's face it: we're not paranoid, they really **are** out to get us. Why give them clues about who they're out to get?_ "Andrushka ran Hahndorf's Stormer-ID photo through Interpol and got a hit on it. Turns out he was in the _Stasi_ until Reunification back in '89; floated around for a year or so as a merc, then just flat out disappeared. Up until then, he was a very bad boy." 

"Uh, Stormhawk, Taz - 'bad boy' goes without saying. What about his principal?" 

"The fuzzy-cheeked infant?" She snorted. "Nothing. But the plane's an interesting case." She dug out another piece of paper, and Misha sat down and absently stole another piece of toast out of her fingers as he read. "It's a Bombardier Global Express, an executive transport jet with a range in the area of sixty-five hundred nautical miles unrefuelled, enough for a single-hop trip from London to Jakarta. The interesting thing is, according to Zorro, the Global Express design is still in testing - the prototype's not even supposed to be rolled out until late next year, and when production actually does officially start, if we can get change out of thirty US mega-bucks for one, Zorro wants to know where." 

"Gerry does have a thing about buying toys with sex-appeal," Misha murmured. "Any idea who signed the cheque on the rental?" 

"You jest, yes? That information's on a TTG database in Zürich, and even if The Boys could get to it physically, we'd still have to crack their encryption scheme." 

"Which we haven't achieved in almost three years' trying," he nodded, almost sighing at hearing that old refrain. 

"We'll manage without it," Taz shrugged blithely. 

"Yeah, I guess. C'mon, let's get these papers burned and grab our gear for school. Can't afford to be late again, not with _Tovarishch Tarakan_ as our tutor-group teacher." 

"'Comrade Cockroach', huh? Nice one." 

"I liked it." 

"You would." 

- - - - - - - -

**10:17, SEPTEMBER 26, LIMA (18:17/25-09-95 ZULU)  
HIGGINS WHARF, AHURIRI (PORT OF NAPIER)**

'Andrew Hazelton' glanced up from his clipboard as one of his fellow cargo-handlers came up to his shoulder. "Hey, Drew, y'hear the latest?" 

"What's that, Dave-o?" 

"I just talked to Matt over at scheduling. Guess what? The Lairds On High just ordered Cassidy Quay kept free for the next week - seems they're bringing _Guardian_ in." 

Andrushka cocked an eyebrow at him. "She only left port a month ago - she shouldn't need supplies for another three!" 

"It's not a resupply," Dave snorted. "They're gonna be doing four days of port-visits. Y'know, letting the tourists and locals aboard?" 

_Which is a PR and/or recruitment manoeuvre. Why now? And what does it get them?_ "You sure about that?" 

"Yup - tours are set for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Monday. They laid it on in a hurry, too - Major Seibenberg's over at the Security office screaming his head off trying to get the arrangements in place, calling in extra people. Doesn't that make your heart pump custard?" the younger man drawled sardonically. The Stormers might make Napier 'safer', but that didn't make them any less obnoxious. 

"Yeah - it's a real tragedy. Thanks for the heads-up - y'better get back to work before the Lairds come by." 

As his colleague departed with a grin, Andrushka turned the possibilities over in his head. The Stormers had never before allowed civilians aboard one of their destroyers, and port visits were not affairs one could lay on in less than a week - the last such visit to Napier had been a Canadian frigate three years ago, and that had taken a month's planning. More importantly, it had required a large number of security personnel and guides... which meant that the 'port visit' was an excuse to almost double the Stormer garrison here at Ahuriri. _Question is: what are they **really** up to?_


End file.
